


Purple Converse

by cat_77



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Language, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Violence, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If asked, none of them could have claimed to have had exceptionally stellar childhoods.  With the help of an overprotective handler, an extraterrestrial au pair, and a billionaire sugar daddy, maybe things would be different this time around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Choose a Size

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-Avengers, but pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Follows slight comics background for Clint's past. Also, Coulson is alive and well and known to be so because I wanted him to be.
> 
> * * *

Tony had to admit that the delivery method was impressive. He'd call it ingenious, but he preferred to keep that term relegated to his own creations and he was in no way enough of an asshole to ever try this.

The team had gotten a call that a rather large package had been delivered to the lobby of the Tower. It had been addressed simply to "The Avengers" and sensors could not get a lock on just what it held inside. The building was evacuated, agents dispatched to collect the courier, and the team assembled to figure out what fresh hell they had been gifted with this time.

As no one was dumb enough to assume it was fan mail, everyone was fully geared up by the time they approached, with Tony himself wearing the suit. Barton, of course, mocked him for overkill but was wise enough to do so from the second floor balcony that overlooked the lobby, bow at the ready, while Tony lowered his mask and approached the rather unassuming object.

The box itself appeared to be made of some sort of metal alloy and was roughly one meter cubed. Remote scans and camera angles showed no seams or anything really of note along its smooth expanse. Of course, this changed the moment Tony reached one gauntlet-covered hand towards that smooth surface, which then split at the edges to reveal a brilliant blue light shining from within. When a computerized voice intoned, "Process initiated," he figured they were pretty much screwed.

His shouted, "Get down!" reverberated against the glass and steel surroundings, and was echoed by at least three of his teammates. He spared a brief thought for what the hell Bruce was even doing down there without the aid of his alter-ego before the sides of the box fell open and the thing released a truly impressive payload.

The shrapnel was conical in shape, which he thought strange until he realized the apex was pointed and tore through anything in its wake save for the armor he wore. He knew his friends were not quite as lucky and that, even though he designed the Kevlar-like materials of their uniforms himself, they were far more vulnerable to the attack.

He watched as Barton's exposed arms took a direct hit, the tiny cone changing from blue to clear as it released a payload all of its own. He had a second to register the implications of such a chemical warfare before he watched Natasha miss avoiding the fifth one aimed at her as she attempted to pull Clint to safety behind the reinforced glass wall and then the sixth and seventh hit their mark while she faltered. Bruce writhed on the floor and Tony had no idea if he was attempting to transform or not. He kind of wished that he would as, if the Hulk could withstand a missile, he should be able to withstand whatever the hell they were being hit with now.

Banner was not the only one writhing though. Clint had collapsed in a sort of slow motion despite Natasha's grip, half visible now from where Tony still stood frozen in place, only to be thrown into a sort of seizure right beside his usual partner in crime. Worse than watching Natasha's red hair thrash about though was something that he was pretty sure would haunt his memories for lifetimes to come: she screamed. Not in warning. Not in surprise. She screamed in pain. He had seen her take a gunshot to the abdomen and turn around and garrote a guy with barely a pause for breath. This? This was whole new levels of not good.

Tony's gauntlets barely put a dent in the thing, but Thor's hammer smashed it nice and decent like. At least six of the cones had embedded themselves in various parts of his supposedly impenetrable armor in the process, however, which was in no way of the awesome. Thor picked one free from the back of his hand of all places and tossed it away as though it were no more than some insignificant speck which it honestly may have been to him. He then took precisely two steps to the side and fell face first into the marble tiles, far more than a single capsule embedded elsewhere.

Tony blew a sigh of relief to see at least Steve slowly raise himself back up from where he had ducked behind his shield across the room. Rogers started to nod to him as if to say he was all right, but then paused as he looked down at the small clear container embedded in his calf. Clint had been a speed demon in comparison to how Steve collapsed first to his knees, then to his hands, and then to the ground itself, broken vials like a homing beacon for his legs and arms and pretty much all of him, most of which was thankfully covered by his suit. He'd need full decontamination procedures, but it could have been much, much worse.

"JARVIS?" Tony asked, needing a familiar voice in all of this mess.

"SHIELD containment team is in route," his AI confirmed. Tony was about to breathe a sigh of relief again, until the computerized voice continued, "I suggest you do not move until they arrive. One of the projectiles is lodged in a precarious placement atop your armor and may well break through the joint without assistance in its removal."

Which is how Tony Stark had to stand perfectly still, hands slightly raised, armor both useless and protective, and watch his friends convulse around him.

* * *

The containment team arrived quickly enough, even though it felt like forever to the man trapped inside the little metal suit. It took them far longer to don the hazmat gear and pick their way through the wreckage. It was the closest Tony had ever come to seeing Coulson lose his cool when the agent stepped forward, looked up to where his former charges still writhed, and swallow heavily.

"Stark, what the hell happened?" Coulson demanded through the clear filtration mask he wore.

And so Tony told him about the cluster-fuck of a cluster-bomb and how no one should touch the little cones with anything less than full armor-level gear and how he needed someone to get the one the fuck off of him so he could try to figure out what they were and what they were doing to his team.

Coulson obliged, and a pair of what might have been forceps were used to carefully remove the shrapnel from his exposed joint, the little container of death or whatever it was shattering a safe hairbreadth away from him and thankfully not sloshing onto the person trying to save him.

"I need at least one of them whole, if possible," Tony told him, and Coulson nodded in understanding. 

He was hesitant to raise his mask, watching everyone else galavant around with their clunky breathing apparatuses, but he wanted to breathe something other than recycled air, wanted to see what was happening to his friends with his own eyes. As if reading his mind, which Tony would honestly not be surprised if he could at this point, like some secret SHIELD telepathy project actually gone right, Coulson shook his head. "Stay suited up until we can verify there is nothing airborne," he ordered.

Tony sighed and had JARVIS run the scans and report the data directly to the various equipment brought in just for that very reason. In the interim, he used the suit to analyze what remained of the delivery system itself, the need for movement loosely disguising his need to edge closer to the three teammates still on his level.

Thor was immediately behind him and three agents were currently attempting to turn the large man over, and barely succeeding. Others rushed about with medical instruments designed to work on humans as though the things would have any meaningful say regarding an alien from another planet. Tony could see the rise and fall of that massive chest though, and the way one leg kicked out fitfully and knocked an unfortunate agent on her ass, and took those as signs that things could be much, much worse.

Steve was closer than Bruce and currently draped in a blanket, oxygen mask fit over his face. Something seemed off though, and not just the junior agent whose hand drifted towards the fallen shield only to quickly rethink his actions when he saw Tony approach. "Sir, Captain Rogers' body mass appears to have lessened by twenty-five percent," JARVIS informed him. This was followed by, "Recalculating. Thirty-four percent. The change appears ongoing and has not yet reached completion."

Tony both pissed off and scared the shit out of the agents assigned to his usual team leader when he tore the blanket free to see the damage for himself. If something was eating away at Steve, melting both skin and bone, he needed to know, needed to see, needed to find the quickest way possible to stop it. The suit had fire suppression systems and coolant to rival a nuclear reactor. There was a chance that he could put a stop to whatever chemical reaction was occurring, or at least stall it long enough to find something that could.

What he found was not what he had been expecting. There was no loss of limbs, no decrepit disgusting tissue or calcified exposed bone. Steve was simply... smaller. Younger. And, unfortunately for the agents around him, falling out of the age of consent faster by the minute.

"Cap?" he asked, tentatively. Then, correcting himself as there was no chance the figure before him could be considered Captain America, or Captain of anything other than Crunch, he asked, "Steve?"

Blue eyes fluttered open, and then drifted closed again. His breathing was erratic and it still looked like he had a live electrical wire attached to his nervous system but, other than that, he seemed alive if not whole.

Tony's mind ran a mile a minute, trying to grasp the ridiculousness of it all. Instead, he kept coming back to the fact that this was only one cone of the weapon in direct delivery, against a super soldier serum, against something designed to fight any injury or weakness. His heart lodged somewhere roughly around his throat when he contemplated the ramifications for the others of human origin. Unless Rogers had been hit where neither man had seen before his collapse, or the broken vials had somehow gifted more to his system, this was so not good.

The agents next to Bruce were smart enough to step back when he approached; scuttle perhaps being a better word for their actions. Beneath that blanket was a form even smaller than Steve's, and one that twitched far more violently. "Bruce?" he tried. He was met with wide brown eyes that tinged with green as they took in some seriously unusual surroundings.

Tony decided that JARVIS had done his scans and spit out his results and, if Coulson didn't like it then fuck him because they were talking about someone that looked to be a pre-teen about ready to Hulk out on them all. He flipped up his faceplate to try to show him that there was a human underneath, that he wasn't in some crazy sci-fi fantasy horror flick, but Bruce didn't seem to even register that he was there, focused instead on the near faceless beings in their hazmat suits. "Father?" asked far too small of voice.

"Not quite," Tony told him, trying to force him to look away from the scary weirdness and focus on the cool weirdness instead.

"Where-?" Bruce asked, and the small voice had an odd sort of growl at the end and that was it, a transformation was beginning and it answered about as many questions as it asked and Tony knew from past experiences that they had about thirty seconds, maybe less to get him to calm down or they were screwed.

An agent to his side was prepping a syringe which was just stupid because who in their right mind would shove a needle at a kid about to go berserk? Of course Bruce noticed it and of course the hyperventilating increased and the waxy pallor of his face began to take on a new hue. Tony shoved the agent to the side with maybe just a little too much force considering he was still wearing the suit, and lowered his hand not to cup Bruce's face because a repulsor was probably far from comforting, but to at least block his view as he swore, "No one is going to hurt you. You're safe here."

Bruce nodded shakily but, more importantly, turned back to his far too pale color, right before his eyes rolled up to the back of his head and he passed out on his own.

Tony turned to the two agents that still hovered and addressed the one that still rubbed at a no doubt sore shoulder. "No needles, not for a scared kid. Get him to the conservatory, JARVIS will give you access and lock it down so he won't do as much damage if he does go green," he ordered. Looking upwards via habit more than anything else, he checked with his AI and asked, "Got that?"

"Indeed," JARVIS replied, and the nearest elevator swung open.

The conservatory was the quiet place set aside for when things got too much for a certain irradiated scientist, and/or for when the Hulk was coming down and about to crash. It was soft, it was calming, and it was secure. It also wasn't a damned see-through cell that dropped from thousands of feet mid-air and thus had a bit of added charm that SHIELD's facilities tended to lack.

And it was stupid and would likely damage the tile but, really, the entire lobby was toast anyway and Tony needed to know that the rest of his team was alive and accounted for, so he launched himself upwards to land neatly on the balcony of the second floor, where several more agents milled around and made themselves generally useless.

Or possibly not.

Coulson was bent over an impossibly small redheaded form, crouched low and speaking something decidedly not English. "Russian," JARVIS supplied for him and, yeah, that made a level of sense even though he had never heard Coulson utter a word of it in his life. He may have said part of that aloud as the agent in question simply raised a barely visible eyebrow disapprovingly and chided, "She has been my responsibility far longer than you have been hers."

That was apparently a dismissal as much as it was an explanation and Coulson turned back to focus on his charge and managed to pointedly block Tony's immediate assessment of her condition. If he was talking, then it was safe to assume she was alive. Even from his distance, Tony could see her smaller stature and, based on his experience with his other teammates so far, he felt it was safe to assume they now had a miniaturized Russian assassin on their hands. The cognitive status of said assassin was still up in the air, but the same could be said of the others at this point, so Tony chose to focus on the fact that she, like the others, was still living and breathing and go forward from there.

Coulson would let him know if there was anything else, well, that he needed to know about the matter and, if not, he would hack the feed later and dig it up for himself. Instead, he focused on his final teammate, and the first to fall.

Barton was, well, not scrawny, but really not the size he should be, regardless of the age he appeared to be. His uniform dwarfed him and his hair stuck up at odd angles from from a bleeding head and he still thrashed lightly even though he refused to let go of the single arrow he still held tightly in his grasp.

"Barton?" Tony asked, more out of curiosity for the response than anything else. 

"Who the hell are you?" an amusingly high pitched voice replied. Definitely pre-teen. Definitely pre-pubescent. Definitely still shrinking before his very eyes. The kid's pain tolerance was rather remarkable; the attitude not so much.

"I'm your fairy fricken godmother," Tony replied with a grim grin. "Stop being an ass and let the docs check you over."

He swore he heard a muttered, "Bibbity bobbity, screw you," in return, but the kid stilled as much as he likely could and the medics finally got to work on the large wound to his bicep and several other smaller lacerations. He never did let go of the damn arrow, and Tony could not tell if was a comfort thing or the kid simply liked being armed against the unknown. Either way, he was going to let him be for now as said arrow was not actively digging into anything or anyone vital, so he was going to count it as a win.

Satisfied that every teammate was present, breathing, and accounted for, he was about to turn his attention back to the device and all the wonderful little presents it had gifted them with. That was, of course, when they got a frantic call from the lower level of, "Sir, we have a problem!"

Tony got there before Coulson but, to be fair, the senior agent didn't really want to leave two of his most valuable long-term assets in the hands of imbeciles and settled for leaning over the damaged balcony to assess the situation from afar. The situation in question, such as it was, was Thor.

The massive man had shrunk down to the size of a roughly twelve or thirteen year old human, hair still long and shaggy but armor shrinking to fit his much more slight form. Tony totally had to get some of that as the possibilities for such technology were as enormous as Thor once was. A glance at Steve showed he had evened out at about the same age, though Banner, Barton, and Romanov had already been younger when he had last seen them. 

Thor stood on shaky and rather knobby knees and glared imperiously at those around him. He settled on Tony, or rather on the Iron Man suit, likely narrowing in on the shiny as regalia in its own right. "Do you speak for these mortals?" the child demanded. 

Tony nodded. It was that or let Johnson speak and that man was just an idiot.

Thor seemed to instantly ignore all others and focus his attention solely on the armored man before him. "For what purpose have you brought me here? Where are my kin? The might of the Aesir shall crush you for your impudence."

Tony took a moment to remind himself that Thor was the prince of not just a kingdom, but an entire planet full of people, and had likely been raised with the appropriately inflated ego to go along with it. He had dealt with Emirs and Queens, Congressmen and CEOs - this was something he could actually handle.

"Your highness," he said with the slightest of bows, making certain he got off on the right foot and trying his damnedest to not sound condescending. Thor's lips twitched, but otherwise his expression did not change. "The circumstances of your arrival are still being investigated, but I assure you that you have not been taken against your will, nor does anyone mean you harm. Well, anyone gathered here," he amended as he realized there were a lot of bad guys on this planet that would love to take out a certain group of super heroes should they discover their current states of being.

Thor glowered some more, but seemed to take him at his word. "Is this the realm of Midgard?" he inquired.

"It is," Tony confirmed.

"Then where is my father, the mighty Odin and Allfather of the Aesir?" When Tony did not immediately have an answer for that, Thor looked torn between apprehension at the absence of what would have been his usual protector, and mischief at just what he could get up to in his absence. "Heimdal, return me from this place," he ordered the sky above him. As expected, not a whole lot happened.

"Yeah, they're still working on that Bifrost thing," Tony admitted. It was usable, within reason. It took a lot of energy and was a bit tetchy, but getting better with each attempt. It was usually better incoming from Asgard than leaving from Earth, likely due to them having the energy source right there and Earth, well, not. This meant it would take a hell of a lot to get Thor back to his own people but, considering the circumstances, it was not outside the realm of the possible.

"You have damaged the Bifrost?" Thor scoffed, with only a hint of underlying fear, probably at the power involved to do so.

Tony shook his head. "Nope, apparently you did yourself during a battle with Lo-, er, an epic foe," he told him, quickly forgoing that name of said foe as, for Little Thor, much like Big Thor, Loki was still his brother and something probably not to be brought up as a bad thing.

Thor looked crushed. "I- How did I complete such a task?"

"Mjolnir," Tony answered for him, and gestured to the hammer in question that still lay at the boy's feet. That should be interesting to move, come time to do so. Maybe he could convince the general public it was an art installation in honor of their ally from another world?

Thor's eyes grew wide. "I was worthy to carry the mighty Mjolnir?" he asked in barely a whisper. It turned to definite sorrow though when he came to a realization of, "I took such a weapon from my father's realm and damaged the Bifrost itself. It is no wonder that I have been exiled for punishment."

Tony resisted the urge to rub his forehead. It would do him no good, be seen as a sign of weakness, and would hurt what with the armored gauntlets still on. He settled for saying, "To the best of my knowledge, you have not been exiled. You are here as an honored guest. As for punishment, the act itself occurred in the past and your father was immediately aware of it. I'm kinda doubting that he changed his mind and decided to kick you out now."

"You cannot know the mind of the Allfather," Thor frowned. It was hard to tell if he believed Tony or not, but it wasn't hard to tell that the same guy Tony knew and trusted was within him. He stood, still not a hundred percent solid, but with his arms crossed before him and one hand on his hairless chin. He looked so serious, and more than a little vulnerable, regalia or no, that Tony either wanted an immediate fix to their little problem, or to secret him away with the others before the bad guys of the world discovered there was so much fresh meat to be had.

"No, I can't," Tony eventually agreed. He tried to think of something to make the kid trust him, but kept coming up short. The only thing he could think of, for now, was telling the truth, or a truncated version of it. "I can tell you only what I myself know, and that's that you have been here a while, whether you realize it or not. That we just had some bad sh-, er, stuff, go down that might be playing with that memory of yours. I can tell you that I have trusted you with my life and hope you trust me with yours. I can also tell you that, as of right now, we're still working through what happened and have no idea how to fix it, but we're going to try out best to figure it out anyway."

Before he could say much more, there was a blinding burst of light just outside the main entrance. The SHIELD agents all reached for weapons, but it was pretty obvious what the source of the whole matter was when a buxom brunette with some kicking and familiar looking armor strode in like she owned the place, huge-ass spear/sword-thing in hand. 

There was more than a slight chance that the walkway outside now bore an imprint of the intricate knotwork always left behind by passage through the Bifrost, a chance that greatly increased when the woman introduced herself as, "I am the Lady Sif of Asgard."

Thor spun around so quickly it was a wonder than he didn't fall over. There was definitely recognition in his eyes, but his doubt shone through when he protested, "Sif is but my own age. Who are you and why do you take her name?" 

She knelt down on one knee, weapon still in hand and still at the ready. "I speak the truth, Son of Odin, even as you do as well. We are age-mates, though we do not appear so at this time," she told him. She offered him something small that Tony could not quite make out from his angle, and the boy palmed it quickly. "I have been sent here by the Allfather for your protection. He cannot leave our realm at this time, but wishes for you to know he is aware of your predicament and is seeking both resolution and retribution."

Maybe it was the cynical side of Tony, but he took that to mean that the big guy was not about to risk himself on a damaged transport, nor risk getting stuck with the petty Midgardians when he could send someone a bit more expendable in his stead. Thor's immediate acceptance and hollow, "My father is a busy and powerful ruler, I understand," just cemented that fact in his mind. The kid played with whatever she had given him, fingers quick and agile over the token that had to be some sign from dear old dad, proof of her word or some such thing.

"Does the big guy/Allfather/whatever have any idea what caused this or how to change it back?" Tony asked hopefully. He figured it couldn't hurt to ask and, quite frankly, if there was a fix at the ready he was more than willing to take it, sooner rather than later at that.

Sif shook her head and stood, long ponytail swinging in an almost mesmerizing way. "We are investigating, but have not discovered what we seek as of yet," she replied. That was fair, really. It had been barely an hour and even a civilization as advanced as the Asgard needed time to review the new and wacky disasters that seemed intent upon befalling them all.

Thor cut in, like the teenager he currently appeared to be, and said more than a bit petulantly, "This man claims to be an ally. He claims to have fought beside me though I have no memory of this."

While Tony tried to parse out a response, Sif, barely paused before she replied, "Your memories fail you and he speaks the truth. This man matches the description of the Man of Iron for which you have told me many tales of, and we stand within his abode."

This news he did not take as stoically as the news his father would not be making the trip. Maybe it was the stress, maybe he was pissed about dad and didn't have an outlet for that, or maybe it was a combo of those and more, but the angsty teenaged alien crossed his arms over his chest again and pouted, "If there were battles, there would be tales. Great songs should be sung about the Son of Odin and his victories."

Sif laughed, loud and hearty. "I shall sing to you those that I know, that I promise you."

Tony, however, took a different track as the disbelief was just way too high and he had seen some crazy things, not the least of which were giant space worms destroying the city. "Let me get this straight. He's fine with being shrunk, he's fine with daddy sending an armed au pair, but the fact he can't remember kicking ass is what worries him the most?" He shook his head. "Yeah, kid, Thor, buddy, whatever. I'm not going to Glee it out for you, but I can show you footage of just how much ass you have kicked and how since you came here - is that acceptable?"

Thor nodded slowly, still looking doubtful. "Show me these battles, Man of Iron, and I shall decided if we are the allies as you so speak."

"Queue 'em up, JARVIS," he ordered the air around him, and the wall just to the left of the alien prince lit up with image after image of the various ass kickings the team had participated in over the last year alone. 

His AI, attune as ever, requested over the helmet frequency only, "Did you wish me to include the Battle of Manhattan?"

Tony thought on that for all about a second, and the implications of what was probably little Thor's still littler brother causing that much strife and destruction, and subtly shook his head. That would be opening up way too big of a can of space worms to handle just yet; maybe save that one until such time as there was less pouty temper tantrum and more understanding and trust to be had. Or, possibly not at all. Not at all worked fine too.

Sif stood at the boy's side, grin wide and open, as they watched the adult Thor toss people left and right and occasionally skyward. The kid seemed to recognize himself, at least somewhat and possibly because he was currently wearing the same armor, and marveled at the way Mjolnir was swung with ease. "Who are these others that fight at my side, and why are they not here now?" he asked, not yet looking away.

"Those would be your teammates, uh, fellow defenders of Midgard," Tony explained. He gestured to the med teams and miniaturized bodies that littered the place, and then to the tiny little capsules that were carefully being picked up by a few terrified agents. "They were hit by the same device you were. That stuff hit exposed skin and, bam, kid-ified."

Thor nodded as though that made sense. "And your armor has covered your skin and thus protected you. Use caution, Man of Iron, so that you too do not fall prey to this weapon."

And Tony did not laugh, but it was a near thing and aided by being surrounded by his shrunken team. "Doing my best," he promised, and that seemed acceptable to His Mini Imperiousness.

Thor sat down, right then and there in the middle of the lobby to watch, looking for all the world like he was watching Saturday morning cartoons and not blood, gore, and various electronic pieces scatter across the makeshift screen. 

With him and his babysitter currently occupied, Tony breathed a near silent sigh of relief and turned to focus on myriad of others tasks at hand. Perhaps it was not silent enough though, as he heard Coulson's voice come across the comm and offer a, "Well handled, Stark."

"I try," he replied, and resumed his scans of the device.

"No, you are trying, at least most days, but we'll consider that close enough for now," came the response, and he could hear the smirk through the transmission. Behind him, barely audible but still making it through the comms, came what Tony remembered to be Baby Barton's voice in a near plaintive whine asking, "How come the blond kid gets to watch TV?"

Tony looked up to where the shrunken archer peered over the edge of the balcony, an agent trying to pull him back from where the metal was chipped and the glass not much more than shards. He took a moment to decidedly not envy Coulson as the man had to currently deal with both Clint and Natasha, speaking a variety of Russian, English, and Circus-ese to do so. Roberts was dealing with a child last thought to be in the midst of a planet-consuming war, and two others were trying to tuck a baby rage monster into a locked and padded room.

He took a moment to wonder where his life took a turn towards the absurd and then shrugged it off and returned to trying to minimize at least this latest round of craziness.


	2. Find the Right Color

Of course he hadn't truly needed to not envy Coulson because of course Coulson, he, and the warrior chick from another planet ended up assuming full time care for his miscreant teammates. Someone needed to, and the guest floor of the residential area of the Tower seemed a far more comfortable and far less nightmare-inducing option than the barren barracks of SHIELD. He had the facilities, the Tower had the security, and only two of the five had ever even really lived in the starkness of SHIELD's standard agent accommodations versus all of them having lived in the Stark-ness of the Tower, and if some small fleck of their original memories remained, maybe they would find their new living spaces a little less than foreign.

Needless to say, Fury had been less than thrilled to discover his top team of world saving agents were currently sitting around one of Stark's living rooms, eating junk food and fighting over crayons and colored pencils. He did see the necessity of it all, and agreed with the security aspects if and only if additional SHIELD agents were allowed to be stationed around the Tower. Tony agreed, mainly because it would be easy enough for JARVIS to restrict their access to anything he didn't want their grubby little fingers in, and then he'd be allowed regular access to friends he kinda didn't want to see end up as lab experiments.

Not that he thought Fury would truly allow that, not really. But he'd allow a hell of a lot less if the kids were under Tony's watch versus that of a shadowy government department that both did and did not officially exist. Fury also used said shadowy government department's connections to get the word out to several other groups that The Avengers were not exactly at their fighting best right now, without the tabloids blaring everything across the globe. Coulson was currently less hands-on with the kidlings and more hands-on with the wrangling of substitute protection against horrible villainy for the time being as they tried to get things sorted. The X-Men and Freaksome Foursome immediately stepped up, the mutants because they knew everything anyway what with the whole psychic and empathic gifts of their team, and the science experiments because Richards was a nosy ass.

"I do not trust that man," Sif announced after Richards signed off some long-winded transmission that amounted to he and his would look out for what they could while Stark and his took their little break.

"You're not supposed to," Tony replied. He pulled up another diagram of the device and frowned. It had been nearly three days and he had made minimal progress on it. He could describe how the delivery system actually physically worked, but could find no tells as to who had actually made the thing, let alone the components of the drug it held, and that rather pissed him off.

"Does he need to be vanquished?" Sif asked. Head tilted to the side as she too analyzed the data with an expression of such calmness and seriousness that he so rarely saw on anyone he worked with on a regular basis save for maybe Natasha. Given that he knew his favorite assassin had a deep-rooted and truly evil sense of humor and that he was fairly certain Sif was simply earnest, it threw him for a loop.

It took Tony a moment to realize she meant the vanquishing of Reed Richards and not the designer of the device, during which time, Coulson had very carefully replied via his secured video connection, "No, he still has his uses."

She nodded. "I understand. Though I shall watch him to make certain his intentions are pure."

"Fair enough," Tony shrugged, and noticed Coulson was not exactly objecting either.

He went back to his design specs and she went back to doing something elaborate and decidedly non-girly involving very many tiny braids and Thor's hair. She had already done Natasha's - and the fact the baby badass trusted her to do so was worrisome on a whole new level - and had added a single braid to the side of Bruce's head mainly because the kid had yet to object to anything and had finally offered a hint of a smile when it seemed like a belonging/bonding type of thing.

Steve had politely turned her down, and Clint was being a pint sized version of his usual self, which meant that he made cutting comments that she did not one hundred percent understand and she refused to do anything to any of the children that they did not approve of lest it be medically necessary.

Blood tests had been, unfortunately, necessary. They needed to see what effect the toxin had upon their systems at every level, and blood was the best way to get a baseline. Steve had apparently been used to many such tests over his lifetime, though he was still a bit in awe of the technology around him. He had not regressed to his original size or medical status for his reduced age, which meant the serum and its effects had not been fully negated, but he was still just barely maybe twelve and was seriously lacking the full muscle mass that made him Captain America.

Barton submitted for the tests and treatment for his wounds with the promise of sugar and a huge-ass hamburger that he didn't quite finish half of. Coulson had somehow talked him down from carrying an arrow with him everywhere to just carrying an arrowhead, and managed not to hand him the razor tip version with possibly a bit of slight of hand and possibly a bit of a promise that he could go to the range to see some of the specialty bows there if he complied. From the look of awe the skinny boy wore when he returned, the circus freak was suitably impressed.

Natasha was not going to let anyone near her, no way, no how. She had injured three medics who had been stupid enough to try something while Coulson had been busy talking Fury down from taking the kids to a locked bunker. Stark had no idea how he did it, but Coulson called, spoke to her for less than ten minutes, and then she sat perfectly still and allowed them everything they needed. He doubted she was truly that docile, but more that she had a sort of contained deadliness of complying just to attack when least expected. Sif agreed.

Thor complied because Sif told him to, possibly in a tone Tony hoped to never hear from such a beautiful woman ever again.

Bruce worried Tony. As in truly frightened him. The boy was so much younger in appearance to everyone. Steve and Thor had ended up almost the same age, Natasha around ten-ish, and Clint around nine-ish, but Bruce looked barely six. It probably had something to do with the gamma ray exposure and such, but it really wasn't his age that frightened Tony quite so much as it was just how damn compliant he was. He saw needles, looked far more resigned than a grade schooler ever should, and held out his arm for them. The only thing he looked slightly surprised by was that nothing went in, only out. It made Tony kinda want to find a way back to the original Daddy Banner that made Baby Bruce that way and kick his ass a little.

Aggression aside, he currently had a table full of kids who were both distrustful of him and each other, and slowly getting over a smidgen of that distrust at the price of possibly a lifetime of cavities. 

"Hey, Fairy Stark, do you have any more of these?" one of the young voices piped up. That would be Barton, who found a joke and would not let go. So, pretty much same as always, really.

Tony looked over to where the scrawny kid was actually dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, so score one for Sif for managing that, and shook his head at the chocolate chip cookie he was waving. "No more chocolate. Try one of the Fig Newtons - they taste like cookies and totally count as fruit to keep the suits happy," he replied.

As one of the suits in question was Roberts who was filling in for Coulson, Tony earned a frown for his troubles. However, Clint did something a little more than a little surprising and did not just shove the whole treat into his mouth. He broke the thing in two and gave half of it to Bruce, who looked like his birthday had come early.

Barton, of course, noticed the extra attention he received for the action and forcibly shrugged it off. "What? He reminds me of my brother. Kinda. You know, if my brother looked nothing like me and didn't get us into trouble and was younger instead of older. Oh, hey, did any of your fancy fairy powers find Barney yet? He's got to be getting scared by now. Not that'd he'd admit, but you can tell, you know? He'd probably say he was worried about me instead, but it's totally a lie 'cause I can handle myself."

And therein lay another problem. There was no way no how any of them wanted to admit to a kid that his brother was presumed dead, possibly by his own hand, and possibly because he had become evil incarnate. Roberts took the short straw on that one, and explained, again, "Clint, do you remember what we told you about what happened?"

The little head of spiked blond hair nodded. "Yeah, but it's crap. We're big guys turned into little guys and you're not just playing pretend or messing with us. Whatever. Let me know when you're done screwing around and when I can see my brother and what he did this time to get this major of a timeout," he replied around a mouthful of cookie and the forced bravado of the scared and trying to fake it. "Still, this is far better digs than any orphanage I've ever been to." The last part was muttered, possibly not fully meant for any audience and possibly meant as a compliment to Stark's hospitality. The compliment wasn't fully realized because there was still far too much doubt to be had and no one was willing to fall prey to complacency.

And that was one of the fundamental problems the adults were currently having with the non-adults. You try to tell someone who looks like a kid and has only the memories of being a kid that they are not a kid, and you get told you are a lying liar who lies. They were going on about round nineteen of this, and Steve and Thor seemed to get it, or at least pretended to after a while, but the others did not. Tony was getting tired of it and blithely came up with, "Okay, fine. You're kids that are here for your protection because of some seriously bad sh-, er, crap, that went down. We haven't found any trace of your brother yet but, if we do, we'll see if we can bring him in too, okay? We're trying to protect you guys, for real, and that goes for any extended family that might be put in the line of fire as well."

Clint beamed, bright and smug. "See? Was that hard?"

Roberts sighed, but looked resigned, and Sif looked worried. "Is telling falsehoods truly beneficial?" she asked when he got up to get another coffee.

"He's not believing it, Banner's too young to make sense of it, and who the hell knows what's going on with Natasha?" he shrugged. "If it keeps him calm and less likely to break out and wreak havoc, so be it." He stretched, popping several vertebrae back into place and added, "Plus, considering how many people we thought were dead have popped up again, who's to say Barney isn't out there somewhere wreaking a little havoc of his own?" It wasn't completely the truth, but it also wasn't completely a lie. He had chosen his words carefully and, hey, if it worked with Congress it should work with a handful of rugrats, right?

He looked down when he felt a gentle pull on his pants leg, finding a mess of dark curls and some rather pleading eyes staring back at him. "Mr. Stark?" Bruce asked quietly, as if afraid to disturb the adults. The kid bit his lip and looked to the side as though unsure what to do now that he had the adults' attention.

"Yeah, big guy?" Tony prompted.

"Can I stay here? For longer?" he asked, voice as painfully small as he himself currently was.

Tony knew what he meant, knew what a kid was asking for even if the kid himself didn't fully understand it. He had just blathered on about finding their families. If his suspicions were correct, and his hack into the SHIELD databases told him they were, Bruce would be perfectly fine not finding a certain member of his family ever again.

He put his mug to the side and swung the child up into his arms, all impossibly light and incredibly tense gangly limbs of him, and promised, "Yeah, big guy, you can stay as long as you like." The boy relaxed just the tiniest of bits and Tony once again thought thoughts a six year old should never know about. He'd be lying though if he said some small part of him didn't wonder if the elder Banner's experiments on the younger had not played a role in letting him live through the gamma ray overload when damn near anyone else would have died. It was the scientist in him, really, and he made a mental note to talk to the adult Bruce about such things if given the chance. It was the human in him that kinda wanted to resurrect Bruce's dad just to personally take him down again though.

He was thankfully distracted from such thoughts with the arrival of one Ms. Pepper Potts. She had a shopping bag on each arm, as did the agents accompanying her on the ride up the elevator. She deposited her burdens with a flourish and announced, "Okay, I think I did better this time."

"Is all that really necessary?" Roberts asked doubtfully as he eyed the new arrivals. He was not the only one eying the packages, though the others did so with far more anticipation.

She turned to him, decidedly unimpressed, and spoke to him in what Tony liked to think of her I-am-CEO-because-I-eat-people-like-you-for-breakfast voice and said, "You have five guests ranging in physical age from six to twelve and ranging in size accordingly. We cannot and will not keep washing the same two outfits over and over again. It's not fair to them and, really, it's not like we're short on the funds to provide for them appropriately. Should the situation be resolved sooner rather than later - and we all pray that it will be - the Stark Foundation will simply donate a few extra items to a local shelter. Should there be a delay - and with our luck and history there will be - the people we call friends will hopefully be a little more comfortable."

He didn't have a response to that, which is just as well as Steve, ever the polite and dutiful, chose that moment to ask, "Ma'am, is there something we could help you with? You seem to have an awful lot to deal with." He blushed and ducked his head and stammered, "I mean, if you'd let us. Not that any one of us means to get in your business or anything."

She turned on her truly impressive heels and said to Tony, "Seriously, he's always been like this? It's adorable. Can we keep him? Or clone him or something?"

"I'm pretty sure there's a few laws against that, some of them scientific, but I'll see what we can do," he replied in mock seriousness. He looked to the bags, and then to his miniaturized teammates that were nearly vibrating with anticipation, and then back to her and guessed, "Free for all?"

"More or less," she admitted with a shrug of her slim shoulders. "I picked a few specific things in a few specific sizes, but kept everything as neutral as possible after last time."

Last time was, of course, the first time they attempted to outfit the gang. She had made the mistake of buying either black or red Converse sneakers for the boys, and purple for Natasha after getting their sizes verified via JARVIS. Natasha had sneered at what she had apparently deemed a less than equal offering. Clint had pouted because he really and truly liked the color purple, which they should have known already based on his adult clothing choices, but both had forgotten. Pepper had promised to pick up a pair of purple sneakers for him, and then Bruce had looked hopeful because his current mentor and protector - and wasn't that a scary thought - was getting some, and then Thor had announced they should all have a pair to be bonded like brothers and sister or some such thing and Steve just looked excited to have a new pair of shoes, let alone two. The end result was a line of nearly identical purple Converse sneakers currently lining the hallway next to the elevator, the only identifying marks being the initials written with black Sharpie marker on the inside of the tongues, and that Tony's and Sif's were substantially larger than the others'.

He gestured for the kids to have at it and lowered Bruce down to join the fray. The agents wisely stepped back and away from it all while Pepper poured herself a cup of coffee and watched the carnage with Tony from behind the safety of the counter. "Anything new?" she asked idly, as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

Tony watched as Natasha calmly stepped forward and snagged a black t-shirt and offered it the closest he had seen to a look of approval throughout their current debacle before he answered, "Sif has joined the 'We Hate Reed Richards' bandwagon, and a prepubescent Captain America is hitting on my CEO, but no actual progress has been made on any scientific front unless you count the discovery that Fritos damn near dissolve when dipped in Coke."

She nodded impassively and simply sipped at her coffee. She only barely raised an eyebrow when Thor caught Bruce just as he tripped over his own two feet, lifted him up over his head, and declared that perhaps the little ones should avoid the melee. Bruce hung there limply for a moment, and then dissolved into a fit of giggles, swinging his feet as he did so and narrowly avoiding kicking Thor in the nose in the process.

Sif strode forward and plucked the squirming child from his grasp and chided that his Shield Brother was not a plaything, but the damage had already been done. Thor chuckled in a fair imitation of his usual booming laugh and Clint made a running leap for her, smile wide, as he declared that he needed to save "the little one" and Steve ducked and held up his arms as if ready to catch the child if needed. Even Natasha allowed a hint of a grin, though she stayed at the edges of it all.

Sif easily batted away Clint and side stepped Steve, though the latter action allowed Barton to change from a flight path to a ground assault while he tried to climb her like a tree. She bent slightly at the waist and performed a neat twist, Bruce still raised high above her in one hand while Clint now hung by his shirt by the other.

"She is like the best jungle gym ever," Tony commented.

"No, you can't keep her," Pepper replied without looking up from a new text on her phone.

Tony knew he could pretend to be slighted, but he also knew the effort would be wasted. Instead, he focused on Natasha sliding what appeared to be broken pieces of what was once one of the little plastic children's hangers into the pockets of her jeans and sighed, "Put them back, Nat. No weapons until you've been cleared to use them."

The girl pouted, and he in no way found that adorable, but only because he had a sliver of self preservation. She slid two pieces out, and then a third when he snapped his fingers impatiently, and reluctantly handed them to the two very wary agents still standing off to the side. Sif lowered Clint in a way reminiscent of bowling, especially when both Steve and Thor nearly toppled over trying to catch him, and neatly removed a fourth piece from somewhere around Natasha's collar and handed that over as well.

The boys were still pseudo-wrestling, bags smashed and clothing now far from organized, and Sif calmly knelt in the middle of it all and began to sort it with astonishing efficiency, Bruce sitting safely at her side. "Choose now or weather my choices," she announced, ignoring the less than surprise attack against her that stopped before it truly even occurred.

There were a few last minute changes but, by the end of it, each child had a bag full of clothing all of his or her own. Each ran off to their rooms to put it neatly away in their dressers or toss it on the floor or hide it or something, Tony really didn't know and really didn't care, leaving the adults a moment of blissful silence.

Pepper broke said silence by asking, "Have you decided what you're going to do with them?"

"Turn them back," he replied, purposefully obtuse. He made the mistake of flicking a glance over in her direction, so he caught the disapproving look she gave him. He cleared his throat and pretended to shrug. "Oh, you mean if that doesn't happen?"

She gave him another look, this time with both eyebrows and everything, but only prompted, "Tony..."

And because it was Pepper, who knew him better than anyone, really, he admitted to her what he barely admitted to himself, even though he had transferred funds to a holding account within the first twenty-four hours of the whole crisis. "I give them a place to live and the best education money can buy and a better childhood than any of them had the first time around save for possibly Thor because I am not challenging Odin on this one and maybe, just maybe, they grow up somewhat normally to become happy, healthy members of this thing we call society and don't try to kill me in the process."

Pepper eyed him again and he wondered if he had said something wrong, or if he maybe had something on his face the way she kept staring, but then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and announced, "You're a good man, Tony Stark."

"Lies, vicious lies," he insisted, but she just smiled as though she knew better, which she usually did if he was honest with himself so he rarely was.

She grabbed her purse from where she had left it on the counter and said, "I've got to get back to running your company. Let me know if you or the Starkettes need anything?"

"Starkettes? Really?" he scoffed. "They're not... Pepper!" But it was too late as she had already reached the elevator and the doors were sliding closed as she offered a little cheerful wave. One of the agents hid a smirk and Roberts openly grinned, so Tony pointed in their direction and glared, "They are not."

Somehow, as he returned to analyzing the specs of the device, he doubted they believed him.


	3. Make a Loop

It was another four days before the first attack occurred. Tony was surprised that anyone had waited that long, but Coulson implied that SHIELD had already stopped several minor squirmishes on their own before something bloomed big enough to hit the Avengers' radar.

"The X-Men were able to apprehend the team responsible with minimal damage to the subway system," Coulson explained, neatly placing his own pair of purple sneakers next to the long line of others. Tony wasn't fooled, he had seen what was in the suitcase the man had carried back and forth to and from the Tower, and paperwork did not come in size twelves, nor was it possible to weather the slush of exploding baddies without a single splotch.

"Any raised eyebrows?" Tony asked, accepting the data drive offered of the incident.

"Quite a few," came the expected response. "Some of those abated with a certain adamantium-clawed someone smiling his version of sweetly and insisting he just happened to be on his way to a bar when it all went down... at 10:30 in the morning."

It was Wolverine, so technically that was a valid excuse, but Tony guessed, "And that just raised a few more?"

Phil sat down at the table and placed his case beside the chair. "The incident was less than a mile away from the Tower, and no one has seen any of you since the emergency evacuation and the new surprise art installation at the front entrance. Needless to say, yes, people are growing suspicious." He glanced around, head tilted slightly to the side as if listening for the impending mayhem. "Where is everyone?"

"Watching _Finding Nemo_ for like the forty-second time," Tony replied as he loaded the footage. Before the obvious question was asked, he added, "It was that or _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ for the fifteenth time, and I'm getting tired of telling Barton that no, he cannot have an Oompah Loompa."

"What about a trained squirrel?" Coulson asked with only a hint above his usual dry tone.

Tony was not amused. He snapped his fingers in the agent's direction and said, "Don't you start." He suspected the expression he earned in response, but didn't bother to look up to confirm it. Instead, he watched a pretty straight forward clip of a standard subway, bad shit slipping appearing, and then the X-Men appearing to tear said bad shit to pieces.

Something niggled at the back of his mind though, and he was not called a genius just because he liked the title. He rewound the clip of the surveillance feed to a good ten minutes before all hell broke loose and, soon enough, found what he was looking for. "It was a set up," he announced, projecting the image to allow Phil to see it as well. 

He enlarged the scene and highlighted his findings, knowing exactly when what he thought he had seen was confirmed when Coulson commented, "Now that device looks suspiciously familiar."

The box was not identical to what was set off in the lobby, but it was close enough to likely be from the same source. Smooth metal edges that opened seamlessly to reveal the second device inside that caused the actual damage. "They're testing us," Tony sighed.

"They want to see what backup procedures we have in place," Coulson corrected. "They now know of at least one, and have likely confirmed that we have not resolved the aging issue on our own yet given that our team did not respond."

"How long before they make a more direct attack?" Tony supposed.

"How long before you can upgrade the Tower to have a more active defense system?" Coulson countered. "Because my guess is approximately an hour before that."

Tony considered that, and found merit in the consideration. He also knew the Tower already had several defensive systems; he would have been stupid not to include those in the initial design or any of the upgrades since he took on his avenging roomies. Some of those defenses SHIELD already knew about, and some were more along the lines of defending the Tower from SHIELD itself. What he needed was a backup to his backup, a way to protect everything from everyone while still not revealing all the cards he held in his gauntlet covered hands.

He was on idea six or seven when Phil broke the silence to point out, "We may need to consider moving the children to a safehouse, one off the map to even the most senior of SHIELD agents. Normally, I would ask Romanov for suggestions, but I am doubting she would be of much use considering her, well, considering the current circumstances."

Tony's response to that was to pull up the specs on layer one of the anti-SHIELD defenses and project them across the table. He gave Coulson credit for appearing underwhelmed by such information, likely having already supposed Stark would have thought up such things. He did, however, lose some of that credit by the wide eyes Tony caught for half a second before the usual impassive Agent face returned.

"No safehouse can compete with this," he said idly. "Aside from the actual physical shielding and weaponry, a brick and mortar hole in the wall has nothing on JARVIS's intuition and ability to truly piss off the bad guys." He spun the diagram on its axis and spotted a potential upgradable feature. "The kids stay here for now. We might need to make some adjustments, but the kids stay here."

Coulson's eyes never left the convertible EMP pulse generator as he pulled out his phone and Tony would like to think he briefly remembered that this was Tony Fucking Stark he was dealing with, of the Stark Industries legacy, a man who obtained his first weapons patent at age fifteen and had only gotten better with time and experience. "I'll tell Director Fury that it is in the children's best interests to remain here," he said, calm as ever.

"You do that," Tony agreed, and returned his attention to the multiple streams of information that now surrounded him.

* * *

That night at dinner, Sif noticed the subtle shift in the air. "Something has changed," she guessed.

Tony decided to behave and not make snide comments about her keen warrior senses noticing the armed agents currently doing the dishes. She was a lifesaver, her no-nonsense attitude doing wonders with the gang and her Asgardian warrior shtick frightening away anyone dumb enough to even smile in the direction of the kids without her, Coulson's, or Tony's explicitly expressed prior approval. He had a brief concern that he was totally abusing her talents and uses while he hid away from that pesky personal interaction thing, but she put that to rest about two days in to the debacle. 

In her words, she was a warrior sent to protect Thor and, by extension, his friends and colleagues. He, though also a warrior in his own right, would be better suited to seek a cure for their affliction given his propensity for technology and analysis. Her watching, protecting and, in essence, caring for the prepubescent wonders that currently inhabited the Tower allowed him to concentrate on remedying the source of her current task. That wasn't to say she let him off easy either. He was to be present and accounted for during mealtimes and whenever the children needed his version of reassurance. Given children were, by definition, unpredictable, he thought it best to stick around a little closer, use the computers in the lounge and family rooms instead of the labs if he could, reassuring himself that his friends were still alive and kicking and not at risk despite being so impossibly damn small.

Coulson had personally vetted two and only two agents in addition to Roberts to be in regular presence of the children - understandably the same two that had gone with Pepper the few days prior. He also declared that they should make themselves useful as no cleaning staff or kitchen staff were to be vetted at this time. Neither had the balls to protest, but that may also have something to do with a quietly whispered mention of a single word, "Belgrade," that made them both shiver and offer to start scrubbing. Tony had no idea what the story was behind that, and had started JARVIS on a gentle hack to find out, but figured it was good enough to do the job and otherwise let it be for now.

"There was an attack," Tony told Sif. He leaned against the counter, a glass of port in his hands, and watched a family of heroes make a spaghetti dinner look like a war zone. As always, Coulson seemed to come out unscathed, neatly pressed suit avoiding the splatters of sauce and noodles that permeated everything else.

"How serious and why was I not informed?" she asked in a way that was clearly a pointed demand. She tossed back her own glass of wine with a grace that reminded him that she was of Asgard and that he should break out some of that ale Thor so loved.

"The X-Men handled it without need for assistance and I'm telling you now because I think it was aimed at us, or at least at finding out what state we're in," he assured her.

She nodded in acceptance, but offered, "I shall remain vigilant."

"That's like a constant state for you, isn't it?" he joked, and earned a polite smile for his efforts. "Anyway, I'm upping the surveillance around the Tower and don't want you to be surprised if you have a few more tagalongs should you go to one of the courtyards to let them run in the fresh air and all that."

"Understood," she agreed. Then, with minimal hesitation, she added, "I would like to begin to train the children." At his raised eyebrows, she explained, "Neither you nor the Asgardian scientists have yet to find a cure. If an attack is imminent, then they best learn avoidance techniques in the least, and several offensive moves may well be relevant. I believe that their previous training still lies within, whether they remember it or not, and we should ready them for this knowledge to return."

He turned to look at her, to really look at her, and tried to wrap his mind around what he saw. Her dark ponytail was wrapped around her shoulder like Pepper's so often did, the image of a simple, straightforward woman with something on her mind. Like Pepper though, there was a hell of a lot more going on beneath the surface. Behind the exterior of a tomato sauce bedecked t-shirt and jeans lay a true warrior of Asgard. Thor spoke fondly of her and he had seen the footage of the battle in New Mexico. She was calm and easy going and deadly, and he was not a hundred percent sure what that would mean for the kids, but had a feeling she would either be the best thing that ever happened to them, or the worst, and wasn't sure which he hoped for more.

She was actively with them more and may have seen something he had missed and he admitted this if only to himself. He saw his friends regressed to their youth. He saw a chance to give them a better youth than he knew many of them had previously. He also saw a chance for them to have a damn break after everything the universe tossed at them. She saw the future warriors. She saw their potential. She saw what they were and what they still could be. What he needed to know was whether she saw this potential knowing what they were once capable of, or if something a little more active happened to warn of the inevitable fallout and what that would mean for reversing the effects of everything that had happened. 

So he asked.

"Thor referenced a battle held many a year after the age he currently appears," she told him. Which, okay, could be the alien physiology reacting to the toxin differently than that of humans, or so he thought until she added, "Lady Natasha appears much more adept at certain techniques than a child should be, human or Asgardian, and your archer's aim is impressive at even this young age."

"Nat was raised in a way no child ever should be," he told her, thinking back to the stories of the Red Room and the horrors they put children through. It was entirely possible she had already been trained in certain techniques even before her current apparent age. It was also possible that, like Sif believed, something of her true past was seeping through. "Clint has always had an eye for a target, it's how he survived and manage to keep him and his brother alive and fed through the years."

"Thor had mentioned such things prior to the current situation, but I do believe in this instance there to be something more at play," she told him. There was an edge to her tone, an underlying insistence that she was correct in this and that he was not seeing the bigger picture.

"You think they could be turning back without the need for fancy intervention?" he guessed.

Sif shook her head. "I believe that, in the least, their memories may be surfacing. I have yet to see anything more physical, nor has anything other than their bellies grown over this past week."

Tony smiled at that. Yeah, they may have possibly been overfeeding the kids a bit. They were all so skinny and small in comparison to who they had been, and possibly in comparison to normal kids as well. It was hard to tell because he usually avoided such things. Steve and Thor looked more like normal twelve year olds, still growing into themselves, but one had a super soldier serum enhanced metabolism, and one had an Asgardian, so food was a must for both of them. And when they ate, the others followed. If it happened to make them all look less waif-like and more like they could stand up to a stiff breeze, so be it. He had the money and the means and the underlying want to make this life so much better than anything they may have had before. There was absolutely no way he wasn't going to use it.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by the painfully polite voice of Steve. "Um, Mr. Stark? I think Bruce fell asleep."

His first thought was a moment of panic that the kid passed out. He second was to have JARVIS get a snapshot of the mini genius face down in a plate of spaghetti. Coulson was already wiping his mouth with a napkin, ready to potentially mess his pristine suit with a marinara covered child though, so Tony was not exactly worried. At least he wasn't until a supposedly gentle touch to the kid's shoulder woke him back up with a start.

Bruce looked around in a panic, clearly not knowing where he was or who he was surrounded by. His breaths came in harsh stuttered stops and his skin began to take on a distinctive green tinge. "Oh, shit," Tony managed just before the kid tossed the chair back and began to collapse to the floor.

"What's wrong with him?" Clint demanded, protective as was his new norm.

The two agents dropped the dishes and reached for their weapons even as Coulson stepped back, hands clear and posture as unthreatening as possible, and insisted, "It's okay, Bruce. We are not here to hurt you."

Tony could hear the tear of fabric and was mentally calculating the cost of repairs caused by a mini-Hulk on the loose as well as whether he could get to the emergency tranqs they kept for the adult Bruce before the transformation was complete and made the whole idea moot.

Sif, however, had other ideas. She lowered her now empty glass of wine and strode over to the child, pointedly pushing the armed agents out of the way. She hefted the green writhing mass into her arms with barely a struggle and shushed him with, "Hush now Young Banner and come with me. I will bring you to safety and protect you from harm."

Bruce lashed out once, the wrought iron of the back of his chair warping under his strength. Sif pulled that arm to her, head snapping back as though avoiding a punch to the chin, and simply cradled him close. "Come now," she chided, and simply carried him off to the reinforced conservatory as though nothing was out of the norm.

"What the hell was that?" Barton's young voice sounded in the suddenly quiet room.

"Mother used to do something similar when Loki was very young and very troubled," Thor mused and turned back to his cheese bread. "Though I do not remember him turning such colors at the time."

"Apparently a six year old Hulk only takes an alien with super strength to control," Coulson mused as he set the chair back in its rightful place at the table, warped metal standing out sharply against the order of the rest of it.

"You didn't answer my question," Clint pointed out with what likely counted as menace, at least for him.

Tony looked to him and the way he looked ready to bolt to go check on his friend, even if it meant having to fight through the armed agents to do so. He then looked to where Natasha was brandishing a table knife in an oddly seriously threatening way, as in he truly felt she was about to do damage with the thing. Finally, he looked to the gobsmacked Steve, who clearly had no idea what to make of what just happened, but wanted to make sure everyone was alright just the same. 

Yep, still his team.

He cleared his throat to draw the attention to him and not to the incredibly nervous agents - save for Coulson who pretty much never looked nervous - and explained, "Bruce has had some very bad stuff happen to him in the past. The effects of one of these things is that under certain pressures, circumstances, whatever you want to call it, he turns green and damn near indestructible with some serious temper tantrum issues going on."

"Does he know what he's doing?" Steve asked. He looked worried. Well, they all did, but Steve looked extra worried, likely because the explanation for why he was not a wheezy runt like he expected to be had been hand-waved in a similar fashion and the boy was nothing if not intelligent enough to be suspicious.

Tony shook his head. "We don't think so, at least not once he's turned to the Other Guy."

"Where is she taking him?" Natasha demanded, accent surprisingly thick considering she had been so careful up to this point. Tony didn't get a chance to answer because Clint interrupted him with his own demand of, "Is he going to be okay?"

Tony held up a hand to try to get a chance to talk and said, "She's taking him to a place where hopefully he won't hurt himself and yes, we hope he's going to be okay." 

He had JARVIS pull up a feed from the room and project it near the table. Sif sat on the floor, back against the wall, and simply held green mass of muscle and rage. It didn't take long before his struggles petered out, far too young and far too weak to maintain the change for long, and the boy slowly began to shrink back to his normal size, clothing reduced to not much more than rags around him. She still held him, and Tony figured she'd keep him there for a while just to be on the safe side, but still let out a breath of relief that the whole thing was resolved both quickly and with a minimum of destruction.

"He will likely be very tired," Coulson explained. "I ask that you try not to agitate or rile him up in the morning as he may not have full control yet and multiple transformations will be both trying and harsh to his system."

To their credit, the children gathered at the table simply nodded, gazes still transfixed on the images projected before them. To Tony's credit, he waited until all five children were safely ensconced in their beds to break out the mead and whiskey and share it freely with Sif and Phil.


	4. Make Another Loop

The surprising thing was that the others did not seem wary of Bruce in the least during the weeks that followed, and yes, Tony unfortunately meant weeks. Three weeks of the kids being that much more protective of their youngest. Three weeks of the agents assigned to them complaining that the ranks were closing in around them and that they might not be able to get close enough to protect them should the time come. Three weeks of Sif guiding their playtime into subtle demonstrations of strength and agility. Three weeks of analyzing every single thing about the device. Three weeks of not getting a damn step closer to the cure, if there ever was one to start with.

It was also three weeks of minor squirmishes and attacks, all handled by the backup teams, all having the unifying factors of similar delivery devices and locations within a mile of the Tower. Tony thought that was bad enough but, as always, the universe liked to prove him wrong.

It started with Sif idly commenting that the children were performing quite nicely with the standard exercise routines she had set up, with the added bonus that such things appeared to tire them out enough so that they would not be at each other's throats from being cooped up for so long. The notable exception was Steve Rogers. The boy liked to sit off to the side and would only reluctantly participate in the easiest of tasks, and usually only if someone else needed assistance.

That pinged Tony as falling solidly in the realm of the weird, so he went to see for himself. Sure enough, the blond boy was on a bench off to the side, wistfully watching everyone else run around like slightly tamed monkeys.

He sat down beside him, earned a withering glare for his troubles, and decided to jump right in. "Why don't you join them?" he asked, tilting his chin in the direction of the current mayhem.

Steve shook his head. "I... No. No thank you, Mr. Stark."

"The name is Tony and you both know this and have totally earned the right to call me by it by now," Tony replied, tone only slightly chiding. The kid hung his head and yeah, he knew what he was doing with the hang dog innocent look. "None of that. None of the self-depreciating BS. You want to play, so go play. Nothing's holding you back."

Steve shook his head again. "I was never... I'm too old to waste time 'playing' with them." He nodded as though sure of this argument.

Tony scoffed. "Yeah, no. Thor is your age, or the Asgardian equivalent so he's probably much older in our terms, and he's out there making a fool of himself." As if scripted, Bruce chose that moment to fall backwards off a balance beam set about a foot off of the floor. Thor caught him neatly, swung him around with a shared chortle of excitement, and set him back down to teeter on the edge again. Tony didn't miss the way Steve's hands clenched at the action, like he had to actively fight the instinct to pick the younger boy up himself and set him to rights.

"Thor knows what he's doing," Steve finally said, hands slowly unfurling. He motioned out towards the others and added, "That's his sister or aunt or whatever leading them, he's used to her. I'm... really not." He shrugged as though it didn't matter, which made Tony suspect it really and truly did.

He thought about it for a moment and then asked, "Is it the fact she's leading the whole thing? A chick or dame or whatever you want to call her? Or is it that you are still used to being the old you? The one that would fall over in a strong breeze or wheeze yourself to death trying to climb a flight of stairs?"

Steve's head whipped around and there was a flash of guilt for a split second before he tried to school his features into something a bit more innocuous. It was less than successful. "Dames are fine. Dames are good. Natasha could probably wipe the floor with me if she wanted to and kind of reminds me a bit of Bucky's cousin Shelly that way. I have nothing against a girl doing what she wants, even if it's not what I'm used to."

"So, if it's not the chick thing...?" Tony prompted. He had a feeling he knew where this was going, just as he had a feeling that, for once, he should keep his mouth shut and let it get there on its own.

Steve suddenly found something under his thumbnail far more interesting than the world around him. He hunched forward, hands in his lap and fidgeted for a good minute before he gave in and said, "You said I've changed. I mean, obviously I have, but, you know, differently." He paused and abused his pointer finger instead when he explained, "You said we were old and got young. You said while I was old, I got some magic shot of something that made me strong, got rid of all the stuff that made me sick." Quieter now, so quiet that Tony could barely hear him and he was sitting as close as he dared, the kid said in a rush, "What if it all goes away?"

And wasn't that the brunt of it? Tony sighed and tried to think of something that didn't sound like empty platitudes or something that would only serve to piss everyone off and managed, "What if it does? Would you rather sit on the sidelines afraid for when it stops, or join in and enjoy it while it lasts?"

"What if it goes away while I'm trying to do something?" Steve blurted. He took a steadying breath and amended, "What if I'm trying to help Bruce, like Thor just did, or Clint or Natasha - not that she would let anyone, but anyway - what if I do and it goes away and I end up hurting them?"

Tony leaned back on the bench, bracing himself with his hands. The kid was not afraid of reality coming crashing back around him and becoming a gasping mess, he was afraid of it doing so at the wrong time and costing him one of his newfound friends. Yep, definitely still the Cap in there. "Then we pick you both up and start all over again," he shrugged, trying for nonchalant.

"Just that easy?" Steve asked bitterly. Now that was the voice of a kid left behind one too many times on the schoolyard.

"Yep," Tony nodded. "You've seen Sif, she's one scary mother, er, figure and you know she would not let you down. Now, you haven't seen me in action, but I'm telling you that I would do my damnedest to do the same. So would Coulson and even Roberts and the lackeys." He leaned forward and forced the boy to meet his gaze. "You may not remember right now, but you have been there for us enough times that it's only fair we're there for you."

"But.."

"But nothing," Tony said, returning to his usual demeanor. "Go out there and frolic and shit. Put that science and muscle to use! And if you fall? Well, it's a good thing the floor is padded and we have a crap ton of ice cream in the freezer."

He earned a smile for his antics, quick and flitting, even though it was followed by a, "It's not that easy..."

"Sure it is," Tony insisted. He resisted the urge to scrub a hand through his hair, mainly because the boy was doing the same, mussing up his neat comb job and making him look far more like the scrappy thing from Brooklyn than the past and future American icon. "I know you, whether you realize it or not. You want to help people. You want to be out there and fight the bullies and stand up for the little guys. You couldn't before, and then you did. Man, you did. And now, at least temporarily, you can't again, at least not fully."

Steve frowned, but Tony pressed on. "Now is not the time to sit on the sidelines and wallow in self pity or whatever else it is that you're doing. Now is the time to train, to build yourself back up to what you could be, and what you will be again. And, as an added bonus, if you just happen to enjoy yourself or make a friend or five while doing so? More power to you."

"I..." he started, hesitant.

"You are about to get off your ass and show Thor that he's not the only one make an airplane out of Bruce," Tony finished for him, mainly because Thor was doing precisely that at the time. He was slightly surprised that the younger kid hadn't hurled yet but, then again, there'd be a lesson learned in that too, in its own way.

Steve stood slowly and took a single step forward, body swaying back as if ready to sit back down again. Tony watched as he squared his shoulders and shook his hands out of the fists he had made at his side. Steve then strode forward, looking for the world like he was headed for battle, and stopped Bruce mid-air. With the slightest quirk of his lips and only a little bit of question to his tone, he said, "My turn?"

Thor being Thor simply laughed and agreed, "Fair game, friend," though Tony noticed him stand ready and waiting at the side should he be needed.

He stayed there for a while, not because he had to and not just because he was avoiding going back and making absolutely no progress on figuring out who designed the device that started this whole thing and why. He watched the kids, his friends and teammates, goof around in ways they would never admit to had they been their adult selves again, and wondered how much trouble he would get into for saving various clips and footage on a hidden drive should they ever find out.

Thor had the attention span of a caffeinated gnat when he did not have an assigned duty, and had apparently deemed Steve safe to leave Bruce with after only a few minutes. He went on to try his hand at a small obstacle course set up in the center of the room and, before long, Steve joined him and Bruce followed along after until Sif redirected him to something a little less likely to involve something going horribly wrong.

Satisfied those three were relatively safe, Tony turned his attention to his remaining two teammates. Natasha was practicing some elaborate somersaulting move mainly because she had seen Clint complete it successfully, and Clint had moved on to higher and probably more dangerous things. He was atop a part of the course that technically you were supposed to go under instead of over, but scrambling around with his usual poise and grace despite his smaller size. He darted along the top rim with only inches to place his feet and Tony knew he was about to launch himself for the chin-up bar just as he knew they boy had done so repeatedly many time before. He would catch himself, spin if he had enough momentum, and drop to tuck and roll almost delicately as he landed upon the mat.

Only this time he missed.

Tony had been about to look away, but some inner sort of warning bell went off and he continued to watch instead. He watched as Clint teetered on his final approach, and he watched as Clint flailed gracelessly through the air, his right wrist colliding with the bar before he faceplanted on the mat.

Tony was up and across the room before the kid had a chance to push himself up, which was a good thing sing he only fell right back down again when he tried to put pressure on his wrist. "Clint?" he asked worriedly, crouching down beside him.

Barton settled for flopping over on his back with a wince, a self-depreciating, "Well, that sucked," coming out in a choked giggle as he stared up at the high ceiling.

Tony offered him a hand up, watching him carefully. His eyes were glassy, and not in a probable concussion kind of way. His breathing was just a little too fast and a little too harsh and his skin stained pink from exertion just like his t-shirt was stained with sweat now that he was close enough to notice it. It was when the boy took his hand though, that the warning bells from earlier pealed with concern. "You are burning up," Tony admonished. 

He managed to press the back of his hand against the hot and clammy forehead before it was pushed away with a frown. "I'm fine," Clint insisted. He rolled to his feet, but his slight stagger was not missed by either Tony or the gathering crowd of playmates.

"No you're not," Tony scoffed. "At the very least, we're going to get some ice for that wrist and maybe some Tylenol. It should help with the pain and maybe cut that fever of yours."

"I've had worse," the boy pouted. He crossed his arms in front of him with a barely concealed wince. "I can still perform. Get me my bow and I'll show you!"

Tony shook his head both in disbelief and negation. "This is not some backwater circus where you have to sing for your supper, boy. We actually take care of you and care about your state of being. It's like a two-for-one deal with less greasy goodness." It maybe came out a little rougher than he originally intended, but he was pissed so he considered that fair.

"I'm fine!" Barton insisted in a low growl. He turned on his heel to stomp away, but only managed to run head first into a certain Asgardian protector. Sif wrapped her hands around his ribcage and lifted him up as though he didn't weigh a thing. "You are not well," she chided in a surprisingly gentle tone. "It is not good to ignore injury or illness when there is no pressing need to do so. Come, we shall tend to your wounds and assess the amount of confections needed to remedy them."

Clint tried really hard not to smile at the mention of sugar, but failed miserably. "Put me down," he insisted, still trying to cross his arms and look stern.

"Will you remain needlessly stubborn, or relent to care?" she questioned.

Clint glared at her, and then glared at Tony in turn. He looked around to where the others were standing in a protective circle around him, worry clear on their faces, and furrowed his brow. "Hot chocolate?" he relented.

"With rainbow marshmallows," she agreed with a nod. Tony was willing to raid the box of Lucky Charms himself for the goods if need be, especially if it meant the kid would actually take the damn meds. Clint seemed willing and so Sif lowered him slowly and kept her hands at the ready when he stumbled slightly and both coughed and sniffed surreptitiously upon his release. She shared a look with Tony over his head that meant that she had done the same math as he had: one resized Avenger with a cold plus four resized Avengers in close proximity equaled a likely headache for them all by the time everything was said and done.

They called time on the day's exercises and funneled everyone back up to the main area, Tony requesting temperature scans on each of them along the way. Clint was, of course, the highest, though Natasha was a couple of points off where she should be. Bruce, Thor, and Steve all seemed perfectly normal for their current skewed baseline of normal.

Hot chocolate was made and one of the cups spiked with the supposedly tasteless and colorless version of the kiddie Tylenol and placed pointedly in front of a certain shrunken archer who made a face that showed he was less than impressed. Also pointedly placed was an ice pack on his wrist, which he still tried to remove anyway up until Sif raised a single eyebrow in his direction. After that, he just sulked and sipped and slunk lower in his chair while he watched the others compare and contrast which colors were currently smearing and swirling atop the brown.

Tony, for his part, was on the line to Coulson trying to figure out how a kid living in an admittedly elaborate glass bubble managed to catch a cold. Roberts answered that with a hangdog expression when he came in later that evening. Agent Thomas had been exposed to the flu several days prior on a extraction mission, and had in turn exposed Roberts during a debrief who had in turn exposed the kids when it was his turn to check in. Roberts himself had fought the worst of it off in a day or so. Tony knew they would never be that lucky.

Coulson returned that evening with industrial sized packages of Children's Tylenol, tissues, marshmallows both plain and colored, and several boxes of Lucky Charms. "I'm a firm believer in sticking to what has been proven to work," he said when questioned. Tony couldn't argue with that, though he did wonder why the agent picked them up himself when they could have had everything delivered. He had a brief moment of suspecting a planned delay in having to deal with a Towerful of sick children, but eventually figured Coulson was simply making Roberts pay for his error by having to spend extra time with an extremely crabby downsized assassin.

Tony also figured it was probably a bad thing to spike additional hot chocolate with something decidedly not Tylenol and so resisted the near overwhelming urge to do so. Later though, after anyone who would not be eligible to take a motor vehicle test for at least several years was tucked safely away in bed, various amber colors were poured into various glasses that were emptied various times while the adults sorted out just what the hell they we're going to do with the potentially sick non-adults. Also discussed was just what the hell they we're going to do should the non-adults stay non-adults until their lives naturally progressed back in that direction. The words "personal tutors" and "shit tons of security" were tossed around, as were subtle inquiries in just how long Sif's furlough to Midgard may or may not be extended.

The only things truly sorted out and agreed upon were that JARVIS would continue to monitor everyone's temps in an effort to give them a heads up and a chance to head the worst of it off at the pass, that Coulson would refrain from SHIELD BS until everyone was out of the woods as they needed all hands on deck for this potential emergency, and that Sif truly enjoyed the hard cider that Thor had found on a mission to the Midwest a few months back.

* * *

Two days later, and Barton was starting to be a slightly less whiney and snotty mess. His temp was going back down, as were his attention span and patience levels, but they were slightly used to dealing with that in his adult form, so it was relatively easy to equate up their expectations for the downsized version.

Bruce had the sniffles and Natasha was denying needing anything despite JARVIS reporting her burning through tissues in her own room and her continued elevated temperature. She refused to take anything for it and always seemed to know when they spiked her stuff and pointedly poured it out or threw it away in front of them. Thankfully, her usual Natasha stoic-ness meant very little on the whining front. Even more thankfully, both Steve and Thor seemed completely immune to whatever it was that was going around.

Tony upped his usual vitamin-infused smoothy mixture intake in a vague attempt to ward everything off, and secretly smiled when even Coulson was willing to try one of the concoctions. He less than secretly smiled when he watched Steve realize that he wasn't getting sick, even with all the grossness around him. The kid was finally starting to believe in the powers of the serum and, more importantly, was finally starting to come out of his shell.

Things were finally starting to look up, for loose definitions of up, which is why it made perfect sense that this was when the world's smallest and likely still deadliest assassin had a breakdown.

It was half in Russian and half in English and all a garble of words that Tony had trouble making sense of. Apparently someone had told her "no" and she had snuck in to check on a slumbering and snuffling Clint anyway and got caught and chided and then a whole world of trouble opened up.

Agent Alvarez, who was the one to catch her in the first place, tried to calm her down but she was having none of that. She refused to talk to him and only shouted that he didn't have the clearance to know and then tried a move that probably would have put the guy in traction had she been up to her usual strength and snuff. She stormed to her room and didn't want to talk to Sif or Tony either and, on a hunch, Tony shoved Coulson in her general direction and then keyed up the feed from her room to watch with Sif while the junior agents dealt with everyone else.

JARVIS translated what he could for Tony while Sif's AllSpeak took care of that for her. What it came down to, as far as he could figure, was that being sick had pushed her over the edge stress-wise and she just couldn't keep up the farce any longer. Her shouted demands of needing to know what her mission was, just what intel she was supposed to obtain from Stark Industries and the Avengers to succeed, if she was supposed to protect the "family" she had been assigned to or take them down, and her frantic worry about being punished for needing the extra guidance was enough for Tony to mentally rank the person who thought up the Red Room right up there with the original Dr. Banner for people he'd like to go back in time and destroy. 

Apparently, she had been treating this whole thing as an extended training exercise. She had acted under the belief that she was to infiltrate the family-like structure going on with Stark and the Starkettes and obtain vital information to report back to her handler. Her handler was, of course, Coulson - the only person to speak to her in her own language and attempt to guide her when needed. The fact her handler was openly interacting with those she was to infiltrate somehow both solidified the training aspect of the whole thing, and dangled the thought that she needed to also protect those she was infiltrating before her little mind. 

Tony was willing to bet the last part of that may have something to do with what Sif had mentioned earlier and that some remote part of Natasha's mind remembered the group as allies instead of enemies and was trying to sort it out in a way that made sense to a pre-teen with a faulty sense of her past.

Coulson had tried bluffing for about a second and that went as well as could be expected. With a sigh and a push of Tony authorizing JARVIS to show video of Black Widow in action similar to Thor's little clip show, he plotted out the current situation in excruciating detail, neatly sidestepping only the very worst of her past. Soon enough, and he had his hands full of a sniveling, snotty, exhausted redhead who may or may not still try to kill them all in their sleep.

"I don't remember," she admitted when he stopped in, and sounded for all the world as though that was the ultimate failure.

"I know," Tony told her, rubbing her shoulder as it was the only thing he thought he could make safe contact with the way she was huddled on the bed. Her wounds from the initial attack were all but healed, but she had never been one for overt displays of touchy-feely-ness, and he knew well enough not to try it now when she was still hypersensitive to everything else. He made her take the meds anyway, but gave her a mug of what he knew to be her adult self's favorite tea over-sweetened with honey to wash it all down.

Pepper had originally gotten everyone a stuffed animal to cuddle/schlep around when they first de-sized, and Natasha's had sat neatly on her bedside table since she got it. Now she held the black bear close, fingers twined in the red ribbon around its neck in a surprisingly non-strangling way, and slowly drifted off to sleep. He wasn't dumb enough to snap a picture of her at her most vulnerable because he both knew that it wouldn't last long and that payback was a bitch, but he committed the scene to memory to call up at later date when Nat tried to intimidate him or act hardcore or some such thing to remind him that yes, she was human after all.

He had no such qualms about Barton and fully planned on using incriminating pictures of his younger self as the background of every computer he ever logged into for pretty much the rest of his life. He already had plenty, but was tempted to take one more when he stopped in to check on the still miserable kid. He was tucked up in bed, the air-cast he still wore on his wrist propped atop a boatload of blankets, just the very hint of his spaceship bedecked pajamas showing. Something pinged Tony as off though, and his eyes locked in on the odd combo of a little green turtle and near fluorescent pink pig tucked under the wrinkled covers. 

"Come on out, big guy," he ordered, and was rewarded with the appearance of a knotted head of tousled brown curls.

"Clint's a friend," Bruce said by way of explanation. His hand drifted towards his mouth, but he resolutely stopped it before any thumb sucking was to be had. He did, however, sniff in a way that showed he was next in line for the quickly depleting med supply.

"I know," Tony agreed, and scooped the boy up into his arms. "But he needs his rest and you need not to get sick. You're smart enough to know that staying in here doesn't help with either one of those things."

Bruce shrugged, bony shoulder nearly colliding with Tony's jaw. "It's quiet in here. I like it," he said by way of explanation. It made sense, the adult Bruce liked to spend time in his quiet lab or reading in the quiet study, or meditating in the quiet conservatory, so why wouldn't he like similar things as a kid?

"It's quiet in your room too," he suggested, as that was one of the few places currently allowed that was not swarming with other people.

"But then I don't know what's going on," came the sheepish response.

The proverbial light bulb went on over Tony's head. "I get it: you want your space but you want your friends too?" he guessed, and was rewarded with a tiny nod. "Tell you what - how 'bout we go to your room, but keep the door open? Not so quiet but not so Thor-levels of noise? And I can set you up to keep tabs on the others in a way that's totally not spying except for the part that it is."

That earned him a grin and a giggle and he counted it as a win. He scooped up the turtle and handed it over to eager arms and wondered just how pissed the others would be at the admittedly small invasion of privacy, and if that pissedness would be countered by the knowledges it kept a mini Hulk from rampaging around in worry.


	5. Wrap Them Together

By the following Friday, Clint and Natasha were all but fully recovered, from the sickness at least, and Bruce was down to just a few sniffles and Tony was trying to convince himself that the near migraine-like headache was from reviewing the latest incident report and not from fighting off whatever the kids had caught. 

So far, the combination of the X-Men and the Freaks of Four had managed to hold off pretty much every attack and they were fairly certain they were both figuring out a pattern as well as inching closer to the source. One of the major components of the last attack matched a chemical recently stolen from one of Tony's major competitors, and there was a possible lead hidden in there that SHIELD and pretty much every good guy left on Earth were ready to go after.

Which is why it came as absolutely no surprise to anyone that someone else decided to join the fun.

"They figured us out," Tony sighed as he closed down the news feed.

"Only one group so far, and they may just be testing the boundaries," Coulson countered.

Even he didn't look like he believed that, so Tony did not waste a lot of his time protesting. Instead, he pointed out, "Yeah, only one group with known ties to an international organization of criminals who are probably plotting a mass crime wave of multiple locations at once so that either we have to show or we have to let innocents suffer, I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong?"

"They could notify far more serious groups than petty thieves who would then launch their attacks against us," Sif warned, pretty much making his point for him. The kids were having a nice and quiet downtime in the main living room featuring crayons, markers, colored pencils, and as many other art supplies as Tony could think to order. There may have been clay, he couldn't remember but hoped it wasn't the kind that needed a kiln to finish things off.

"We have to ask ourselves if they are truly safe here," Coulson pointed out.

"A Tower with semi-automated defenses, enough rooms, supplies and training areas for the whole group, and the only place they currently feel safe versus shoving them into some underground hole-in-the-wall bunker with scientists who would love to violate Fury's orders and dissect them the moment we turn our backs? Let me think about that for a - no, I'm going to go with a 'hell no' on this one if you don't mind," Tony fumed. He began to pace, not that it did any actual good but he could almost convince himself that it helped increase blood flow and mitigate the migraine or something. Almost.

Sif's eyes grew wide. "Would they truly violate your director's orders?" she demanded. The apple she had been eating made an odd noise as it damn near smashed in her grasp.

Coulson shook his head but, at the doubting looks he received for the action allowed, "There may be a few - and only a few - that would be willing to risk violating a direct order. There may also be a few that would be loyal enough to someone or something else who would want more research done directly on the children, though Director Fury has been able to hold them off for long enough for it truly to be a risk."

Sif tossed her damaged apple down in disgust, the pieces neatly smearing against the inside of the sink. "The children stay here. It is the will of the Aesir, with whom you have a treaty. Should additional aid be needed, I will call upon the Warriors Three before I trust your petty 'agents' to defend the Asgardian Prince and his allies," she spat.

Coulson took the insult in stride and insisted, "That should not be necessary. Very many people are loyal to Director Fury and very many more are loyal to the Avengers themselves, no matter what their current status may be."

There was an odd beeping noise that drew Tony's attention away from the ensuing debate. It took him a moment to remember that he had set up such a thing to appear less than worrisome should the children be around when the Tower's sensors picked up something that was to be construed as a threat. The calm yet insistent voice of JARVIS also didn't hurt with the memory factor with the announcement of, "Sir, if I could direct you attention to the sensors?"

Tony studied the projections for half a second before he asked, "Are those honest to god flying robots? Coming here? Now?"

"It would appear so, sir," came the unsurprising response.

"Activate shielding!" he ordered and the room filled with a vibrating hum as the Tower began to ensconce itself in a protective barrier. Unfortunately, said barrier began at the bottom as that's where the generators were kept and wow, was that a bad plan because the Avengers and their rooms were always on the upper levels and what was he thinking save for maybe allowing them to get out to face the baddies before the rest of the place was locked down. 

He had a moment to consider that and wonder how to fix that little problem, and then he had a moment to realize the children were sitting in a room that was pretty much half glass and, ballistic quality or no, there was no way that was a good idea. "Get them out of here!" he shouted, but it was too late.

A single robot had made it close enough before the shields kicked in, the edge of the energy field cutting off the tail end of it in a shower of sparks. It launched four smaller bots that seemed bedecked not with weaponry but with surveillance equipment and they headed straight for the wall of glass. One bounced off the side but another pulled out cutting equipment and that's when he knew they were screwed.

He stepped out from behind the counter and called his suit to him, the neat little bracelets that he had taken to wearing everywhere in the Tower amplifying the signal for it to lock in on. He had other means to control it, but these had served as a physical, tangible reminder that he could poke at and prod at whenever he doubted his ability to protect the kids the way he knew they needed. 

Coulson was already both running and shooting at the small machine that was trying to enter through the opening it had cut as well as shouting orders to the junior agents who were no doubt already calling in for backup. His aim was true, but the machines were bullet-resistant in the least, and bullet-proof in all likelihood.

Sif was, well, she was damn impressive. She cleared the counter in a neat leap, then tucked and rolled until she was nearly at the children's side. She protected Clint from the sparks that flew off the protective shell Coulson was still shooting at, even as he and Natasha brought Bruce down and under the relative safety of the table. Clint soothed a slightly tinted Banner with words Tony couldn't quite make out, but Natasha managed a rather athletic leap of her own and actually tried to physically kick one of the smaller bots that had gotten through. It dodged her, but not Steve who had picked up one of the wooden easels and smacked it back towards her. Tony had never seen clay sculpting tools used with quite so deadly precision as when held in the mini assassin's hands. The thing was a pile of sputtering debris in no time, but there were still another two smaller ones to deal with as well as the larger one that still hovered outside looking for an opening.

Suit now on and mask sliding down to reveal full readings on the situation, Tony headed off to deal with the larger bot, trusting Sif and the agents to deal with the remaining two, with or without the help of his smaller teammates. JARVIS showed him an even greater threat though, and so he turned to where Sif fought along side the children and said, "There's another one, full size, that got through the shields on the other side of the building and is headed this way. Do you have this?"

She smashed the bot she held in her hand against the ground and nodded. Before he turned, he saw her hold out her hand, armor forming around her as she stood, and double sword flying to her fingertips. He decided that, yes, she definitely had this, and flew out the now much wider opening to take care of the other bot.

He took it by relative surprise while it was busy either looking for a surface to smash or a place to rip open to allow its own smaller bots to do their damage inside the Tower. The smaller ones flew towards him, and he was able to blast three of the four with his repulsors before the big one made its attack.

His armor deflected the blow, but he noticed a section that he had cleaved off of the bot barely slowed as it sailed past where the shield should have been. A glance showed the glowing field was still in place, and another showed they had reached the level where he had been toying with semi-permeability, but in the outgoing direction only. He had been thinking about the need for escaping Quinjets, alien gods, and his own suit at the time, but now thought about how it was a potential escape point for his current foe and his surveillance loving friend.

He dodged one way and it dodged the other and the smaller robot made for the shield and he managed to clip its propulsion system just before it could test his programming for Stark-approved transponders only and it careened towards the ground with a satisfying thud. It had bounced off the shield on its way down, but at least one hopefully inert piece had made it through to crash on the sidewalk below.

That keyed him in to yet another issue as they were damn high up and momentum was a bitch and now he had to worry about the big thing both making it through to escape and making it through to crush the throngs of people doubtlessly gathered below. The robot attacked as he was still working out that particular problem, and he fired back and, after a handful of lucky shots, he managed to take out its guidance system and watch as it flailed and faltered.

He had a moment to appreciate his handiwork and a moment to swear profusely and then he flew at it, letting its bulk crash into him as he tried to control its descent, the weight and speed of it all making it far easier to work with gravity versus against it. He knew he left scorch marks on the pavement before he finally let go, but he also knew he limited the potential damage, which was damn near a first where the Avengers were concerned.

He took a second to congratulate himself and was about to request a status update on the other bots, but was distracted by the sound a collision and something that could only be called a battle cry. He looked up as a massive hulk of thrashing metal careened towards the ground, Sif soundly atop it, a blade punctured through something clearly vital.

The shield kept the worst of it in with a few pieces bouncing upwards only to rain back down on them both. Sif paid them no mind though as she picked up the remains of what might have been one of the smaller bots and might have been the larger one's own scanning system and stared into its quickly failing depths. 

"I am Sif of the Aesir," she announced, voice echoing far beyond the reach of the Tower. "And this world is under _my_ protection."

She pulled her blade free and glared at the few bots that still circled outside the shield until they turned on their proverbial heels and fled. Satisfied, she turned on her own heel and, with a flip of her braid over her shoulder, headed back towards the Tower's main entrance, leaving Tony behind to deal with that mess while she went on to doubtlessly deal with one of her own on the upper levels.

As much as Tony wanted to just grab anything usable from the downed robots and rush back up to the children to assure their safety for himself, he couldn't help the thought that at least she managed a damn good sound bite to lead into the evening news.

* * *

"Well, that happened," Tony sighed. He sat heavily in an overstuffed chair and glared in the direction of the plywood covering the shattered opening to the outside. Apparently there was one thing even more dangerous than evil robots attacking the Tower, and that was leaving the gaping hole the robots left behind open to the curious gazes of a handful of truly amped up kids. How Coulson hadn't tasered Clint to keep him from hanging his head out and making interesting comments about the distance and velocity to the ground below yet was the eighth wonder of the world as far as Tony was concerned.

"At least we now have a viable cover story for the absence and supposed seclusion of the team," Phil suggested. Tony had implied, strongly, and the news had run with the idea that the Avengers were hosting a delegation from Asgard to work on a treaty of mutual cooperation. That this treaty was primarily a roster of which of the kids did what chores at what times was irrelevant. Sif's declaration had only solidified the idea in the eyes of the media, and they had a nice neat padded excuse, at least until the truth inevitably broke free.

They also had a chance to see the children in action, such as it was. JARVIS had recorded everything from the moment the first robot appeared right up until the Coulson-approved medic checked everyone over for possible injuries from the flying glass. Sif's earlier observation was brought to life in brilliant 3-D technicolor as they watched kids do things that were way out of league for the standard preteen.

Natasha's skills were, of course, exemplary. Given the training she would have had prior to her current maturity level, that was to be expected. Given that the training stressed infiltration and self survival, her overwhelming protection of Bruce and the others keyed them in to the possibility of something else at work.

Clint had managed to both help tuck Bruce away and to nearly take down one of the smaller robots on his own. He had hit the weak spot of the thing mid-flight with a piece of shrapnel from another fallen bot, disabling it enough for Johnson to finish the job, despite still being hindered by the cast. He also distracted Bruce enough to keep the boy calm and avoid a full Hulk-out and the discovery of whether or not a six year old green rage machine could survive a jump from that height.

Steve had helped in that matter as well, just like he had helped Natasha and just like he had helped Coulson when he got knocked back against a wall for a split second before he rallied. He had the super serum on his side, but he also slid into and out of the fight seamlessly, some innate sense putting him in the right place at the right time, just like his adult self on the battlefield.

Thor was the one who surprised them the most, however. After watching Sif call her weapon to her, he had tried something similar. What he expected no one knew as he looked utterly and completely surprised to find Mjolnir appear in his hand just in time to send a hunk of machinery away from the others. He smiled widely and broadly and boasted that he had been found worthy after all. Of course, he then later teased Clint that it was okay for him to cower with the child Bruce and let the true warriors do their jobs and the hammer fell from his hands to create a decent-sized obstacle in the middle of the living room.

The kids themselves were currently ensconced two floors down in what had once been Tony's personal home theater and now served as the perfect containable downtime area for those who needed an extra nudge in that direction. Comfy, carpeted, and lockable, they could lounge about and munch on snacks and hopefully pass out on one of the chairs or couches or even the floor and not be anywhere near the emergency repair crews that were to try to get everything fixed sooner rather than later

The feed from the room showed everyone roaming around and joking and fighting over which movie to watch and all in all seeming like a normal bunch of every day kids having a sleepover at a slightly more upscale than usual place. A closer look showed the bandages and bruises and smiles that were just a little too tight and the way they all stayed just a little bit too close even when mocking and tossing popcorn in each other's hair. There were extra pillows and blankets piled everywhere with enough both for everyone and for their little stuffed friends that were gathered on one of the chairs to the side. Bears snuggled with bears snuggled with pigs snuggled with some weird fairytale serpent-like thing Pepper had thought Thor would like. The only exception was the missing turtle, which was held snugly in the arms of a certain little curly haired boy that refused to let go of Sif's hand.

Sif herself was calmly organizing everything and making sure everyone had what they needed and pointedly glaring at the camera to let them both know that their avoidance time was nearly up.

"Shall we?" he asked, gesturing towards the feed and, yeah, Sif was using her alien powers again as she smiled as though she had actually heard him. He wondered how much work he was going to be allowed to bring down even as he wondered if he had the authority to refuse to watch Nemo and the gang one more fucking time.

Coulson stood and gathered both a stack of folders and a tablet, which Tony took to mean non-cinema related activities were welcomed. He also verified with Roberts that everything was secured before he set foot in the elevator, however. Roberts and Happy were to oversee the bulk of the emergency repairs with JARVIS overseeing them. Tony would have preferred to check everything himself, but the kids had asked and looked so perfectly pathetic that he relented. He could still review everything and fix anything that he did not consider up to snuff from a distance, but could also stay close enough to verify his team was alive and breathing and whole at the same time. If the price to pay was high-pitched animated annoyingness and greasy fingers on leather furniture, so be it.

Later, after convincing everyone that a Voltron marathon was the way to go and somehow becoming a human body pillow in the process, he reviewed the specs for the downed robots while losing feeling in his lower extremities. Though tech was involved, the alloys and structure did not match that of the initial attack and he found they were no closer than before as to solving the whole mess. It was possible the baddie had changed their MO or decided to dabble in a different sort of danger, but he kind of doubted it.

He leaned back and debated whether or not he could drift off, an hour or two of rest possibly realigning his thought processes enough to make sense out of everything, but was stopped by a jab to the ribs. He looked down to find Barton looking up at him with a look that in no way could been seen as apologetic. He raised his eyebrows in silent question, but mainly because he knew speaking would involve both waking Natasha and undoubtedly asking who the hell gave the obnoxious pig its own arrowhead, neatly tied on a string around its neck.

Clint shifted the pig slightly under his arm as though aware of the gaze it was receiving, nearly taking out Tony's chin with his cast in the process, but simply whispered a semi-petulant, "Thanks, Fairy Stark. For, um, everything, really." He then lowered his head and stared resolutely at where giant metal lions were being called forth from the corners of the Earth.

"You're welcome," Tony replied, nearly as soft as the original admission.

There was a roar from the screen and subtle shifting around him and he had a once and hopefully future American icon's knee in his kidney and his legs were going to hurt like a bitch when his circulation returned and all he could think of was that yeah, this was exactly what he needed after the day he had.


	6. Pull Them Tight

Needless to say, the training took on a new aspect after the attack. The kids had shown what they were capable of, which Sif took as a baseline for them to improve upon. Basic tumbling turned to evasion turned to grappling tactics, and playful runs became timed tests of endurance. No one complained and several tried to push each other harder and higher, the recent attack still fresh in everyone's memories. 

Tony hated that they were having the daily equivalent of boot camp, even as he saw the necessity for exactly that. The kids were at risk. The kids were targets. He hoped they had stopped the robots from broadcasting the true situation to whoever had been controlling them, but there was no guarantee and no promises and that was simply a risk no one was willing to take. Besides that, if the past had taught them anything, it was that their luck well and truly sucked in situations like this, so they might as well just assume the worst with a vague hope for something that blew even that tiny bit less.

They intermixed actual school-like lessons in with everything else at Pepper's request as well. None of the multiple teams involved were any closer to finding a way to turn everyone back and, on the off chance it simply wasn't possible, Tony intended to hold true to his earlier plan of providing them with the best education money could buy. For now, it meant SHIELD-approved tutors, also known as agents who worked undercover missions in schools more often than not and had an easy rapport with children that age. Eventually, it might mean more. Tony still wasn't sure if that eventuality would count as a defeat or a victory over solely preparing his teammates to be weapons of the future.

During the pseudo-school-time, Coulson supervised and had the final say as to just what curriculum was to be taught to what student. The agents adjusted basic age-appropriate subject matter to account for both learning styles and the drastically different backgrounds. Given how well pretty much everyone was doing, and the associated boredom that came with that, Sif's assumption that the memories were only buried and not forgotten was once again at the forefront. Clint should really not excel quite so much at pre-calculus, and Steve should not be quite so good at post-war history, and yet they were. The less said about Thor's take on the whole thing, the better.

During what he was beginning to think of as drill time, Tony kept the feed from the gym up in one window while he decimated the robots in his lab and tried to make sure to congratulate the kids on a particularly difficult takedown during the mandatory shared dinner time. He knew he should pay equal amounts of attention to the bookwork, but he also knew that dividing his attention might well cost him the focus needed for solving the whole damn thing in the first place. That didn't mean that he didn't keep a window up for that too, just that he kept the sound off on that one and trusted Coulson to let him know if he missed anything important.

He had worked on more than just the robots while locked away though, and was pleased to present his prizes on the same day Sif deemed them ready to receive them. They had worked exceptionally hard and passed some unspoken test she had given them based upon completion of tasks and teamwork, with Mini-Cap and Thor literally carrying the far smaller Bruce to the finish line to ensure he crossed with the others. All in all, they deserved a reward and Tony finally had a reason to indulge them with one thing he knew he was good at: presents.

Clint's was, of course, a bow. A specially designed bow with far more bells and whistles than what you would find at your neighborhood sports store, but still the basic tool that the adult version of Clint knew and used so well. Slightly smaller in size and lighter in weight and draw than his standard gear, with the appropriately sized arrows to match and a quiver sized to fit his smaller form. The kid immediately ripped off his air cast and tried to run to the range, stopped only when he realized the others weren't following and that they had some sort of unspoken promise to stick together.

The look on Natasha's face when he handed her a set of butterfly knives could only be described as gleeful; the look on Alvarez and Johnson's far less so. He had debated what to give her, but decided to stick with what worked and Coulson mentioned the design had always been a favorite of hers. The hidden trackers in both were, of course, an upgrade, as was the red double triangle design atop to black matte finish. He didn't tell the others that the polymers and alloys of the design should be virtually undetectable from all but JARVIS's attuned sensors, but her raised eyebrow as she ran her thumb over the casing told him she suspected something of the sort.

After much debate and conference with Fury, Steve was awarded his standard shield. The kid seemed inclined to both blunt force and protection, and there was no reason to change up something tried and true. It was a little big for him, but there was a distinct shortage of vibrantium to create a shrunken replica, and he seemed pleased to be treated almost like the adult he thought he was. Despite his stature, he was still stronger than most adults as well so, while the shield may be slightly on the unwieldy side until he grew into it, the weight wouldn't be that much of an issue, if at all.

Thor was gifted with a mock-up of Mjolnir. It didn't have the same punch and didn't have the "only one who is worthy" properties, but it did have a solid enough heft for the super-strengthed teen and would serve as back-up if nothing else. At the very least, he would be able to do some serious damage, which was rather the point of the whole thing. Thor was, reluctantly, pleased, especially when Sif explained it cemented his status as a warrior.

Bruce was not given any sort of weapon because Tony simply could not wrap his mind around arming a six year old. Given that the others seemed inclined to protect him with everything they had anyway, and the fact mini-Hulk was nearly as durable as Hulk Sr., Tony had opted for a different route entirely. What looked to be a slim I.D. bracelet in the obligatory purple highlighted with green was wrapped around the far too tiny wrist, with explanations of how to activate the panic button hidden within.

"But, won't it break if I, um, change?" Bruce asked, even as he spun it around and around his wrist.

Tony shook his head. "If I did this right, and I am usually pretty dang good at these things, it should grow with you. You Hulk-out, and it expands to fit," he explained.

"And it will keep me safe?" the boy asked doubtingly.

That made Tony pause, but only briefly. He had debated adding shielding tech to the thing, but there were far too many variables to be worked out still, not the least of which was a power source both inconspicuous and light-weight enough to be carried around on a daily basis. "It will send out an alert, which will bring people to you to keep you safe," he corrected.

Bruce nodded but, of course, that was not simply that, as he looked over to the others, all eager to play with their new toys but waiting patiently for him, and asked, "But what about them? How do they stay safe too?"

Which is how Tony found himself staying up until three in the morning, building another four bracelets, all neatly color-coded and all with unique identifying signals, plus a few spares because they had so far lost or damaged enough random items about the Tower that it was another one of Coulson's miracles that no one noticed they were actually on the third incarnation of Fergus the Turtle.

Everyone wore them readily enough, though he couldn't say if it was out of desire to play with new tech or the need to ease their youngest member's mind. Bruce didn't even care that technically he no longer had something uniquely his, though Tony still felt the need to give ol' Fergus a band of his own. If nothing else, maybe it would help save Coulson's miracles for when they really needed them.

* * *

The bracelets came in handy far sooner than anyone would have liked. The children were at the range located near the main training area. It had existed pre-transformation, much like the training area itself really was not much more than the main gym with a few things added and a few things taken away. All normal weaponry was safely locked away from little hands, but that didn't mean those same little hands couldn't inflict a decent amount of damage.

Targets were decimated with a flurry of arrows, blades, and blunt force while Bruce sat off to the side with a pack of colored pencils and a coloring book that may or may not have had some educational value. Everything was going swimmingly, right up until the Tower's proximity alarm went off and a large chunk of the side was removed to show one of the damned robots, shield glowing into place behind it. Five additional, slightly more individualized alarms went off in quick succession after that, screens anywhere near any agent lighting up as fast as Tony's suit's own HUD.

A blast rocked the base of the building, no doubt attempting to go after the shield generator, but Stark Industries was not new to the weapons business and had enough redundant systems and shielding for shielding in place that it barely made a dent. Still, it was worrisome that whoever that was behind the current series of attacks knew enough to both target that location, and to evade the sensors until the last possible moment.

These were things firmly in the "negative" column for the current situation. The "positive" column held the fact that the thing had chosen to attack while the children were already armed, that Alvarez and Johnson had been present, and that Tony's armor was already forming around him before the bot could circle back around after evading far more than a single weapon.

Tony reached the floor of the training area as Sif's own armor settled about her and Mjolnir and whatever epic name her spear/sword thing was undoubtedly called arrived to do Asgardian levels of damage. The large robot had released its mini-selves and three of the four of them were already peppered with blades and arrows, sparking as they crashed into barriers and eventually collapsed to the floor. Steve was taking on the final one on his own, though an arrow sailed past him to lodge itself firmly in what appeared to be the sensor control mechanism, and Thor and Sif looked ready to jump out the damned window to go after the motherload.

Tony spared a second to look behind the thing to see another two of them pressing against his new and improved shielding, looking for weaknesses to exploit. He was almost cocky enough to think the bastards didn't stand a chance, but JARVIS was showing him another half dozen of the things trying from all sides and the way it was taxing the generator and he was enough of a pragmatist to realize they were likely screwed.

That in mind, he had JARVIS relay his findings to Coulson and his goons and barreled forward to knock the most imminent threat back and away from the most vulnerable of targets. The thing flew backward and, of course, skidded along the edge of the shielding, frying its own casing a bit as it tried to pull an appendage back through but draining the power supply that much more. They were still good, 82.6 percent and falling, but he'd rather it had not fallen even that much given the limited time of the current battle. It didn't speak well of holding up against a sustained siege and, really, he kind of figured that's what whoever was controlling the bots thought as well.

The robot fired at him and, hey, there was an upgrade because he was fairly certain it didn't have missiles before, so he fired right back, barely holding in a sigh of relief when Phil's preternaturally calm voice sounded over the comm to inform him that reinforcements were on their way. The reason the sigh was held in was because he was still dealing with the monstrosity in front of him who had apparently decided to go hand to hand - or mechanical hand to mechanical hand as the case may be - and of course it had its own set of spinning blades and saws because why the hell not?

His armor was going to need some serious repairs by the time the thing was done with him and, really, it was rather uncomfortable feeling the vibrations even through all the insulation and, yeah, that saw-thing was getting close to flesh wasn't it and finally he thought just screw it and ordered JARVIS to fire his own miniaturized missiles.

"Are you certain, sir?" the computerized voice inquired. "At this close range, the damage to your suit and potentially yourself could be quite severe..."

"Do it!" Tony ordered with a grunt because he estimated about three millimeters before the blade reached flesh and he figured that would hurt a hell of a lot more.

The missiles fired and the thing exploded and Tony careened backwards through the shield, sensors flashing in seizure-ific warning, and he spun out of control right up until he collided with something nice and solid and possibly concussion-inducing.

It was, of course, another robot.

It tried to tear him to pieces and then exploded all nice and pretty like and Tony had the horrific suspicion that he was going to actually owe Scott Fucking Summers a favor. He waived that off for now to focus on the task at hand, that task being the remaining robots, big and small, and the fact they were still thankfully preferring to hack away at him and his Tower versus the general populace.

He looked up and over to the gaping hole to ensure no tiny teammates were flailing about and saw the outline of what appeared to be most of them lined up, weapons at the ready. One of the smaller bots burst into pieces beside him and he was thankful for the mask that concealed his raised eyebrows as apparently Coulson had armed Clint with actual explosives now and the child was gleefully shooting anything in sight that that was big and metal and not the Iron Man suit.

He took out another two and headed for one of the larger ones that was giving Storm trouble and they managed to finish it off right before the entire world became a resonation of sound and light. It was enough to throw them both back a bit and he blinked away the worst of it while guiding her away from the nice electrified field.

"Report!" Coulson ordered and Tony could almost picture him striding quickly to the nearest screen, finger to ear to block out the background noise even as he looked up just what the source of the noise was himself.

"Friendlies appear fine but we're showing an additional three unknowns and a pretty new sidewalk motif and, for the love of science, don't let Summers fry the Asgardians," Tony replied, wanting to smack his sluggish brain for not realizing the source of the commotion earlier.

"Sif confirms the arrival of what she calls 'The Warriors Three' and wishes you send them her regards," Coulson reported, which Tony took to mean that there was no way in hell she was leaving the kids, even with her friends coming to visit.

The battle really didn't last much longer after that, an army of robots unable to withstand the force of even the weakened Avengers when matched with a handful of X-Men and Asgardian legends. The cleanup bill was going to be sizable, as was that of the required celebratory feast afterwards, but the result was that everyone was safe and mostly whole so, really, it was firmly a check in the win column as far as anyone was concerned, even when factoring the gloating of a certain concussive beam-shooting mutant.


	7. Find a Path

"So, what brings you around these parts?" Tony asked. He leaned back against the couch and, yeah, ice packs were good. Ice pack wielding minions who rather clung to him and didn't want to leave his side were better, or at least that's what he kept telling himself while he adjusted their tender loving care to be a little less painful.

"Our scholars believe they have made a breakthrough on the device," the one called Fandral replied. Tony wasn't sure of his story, but he seemed to be made of suave and charm, or at least he thought so. He was damned decent in a fight though, so he deserved the benefit of the doubt for now.

Sif snorted and hefted a mug of something decidedly not apple juice in his direction. "You are far from a scholar, dear friend."

Fandral took the comment in the jest it was apparently intended and agreed, "True, but Heimdal implied that our presence would be quite welcome considering the circumstances."

"We came to you during an outmatched battle; Heimdal was once again correct in his predictions," Hogun added. He kept staring at the children, face impassive, and Tony could not tell if he was sizing up their battle readiness, working out the best plan for protecting them, or just trying to avoid the sweets that would no doubt be flying back and forth in a minute or two.

Volstagg stood beside his erstwhile prince, also staring, but apparently for a different reason all together. He raised his eyebrows but otherwise showed little expression aside from doubt. "He's so... tiny," he mused.

Thor frowned and moved as though to challenge him, said challenge being blocked by a single outreached hand and a smile that seemed to serve as confirmation as to just who he spoke of, regardless of size. "I can still best you!" Thor insisted. He then tried to do just that and Tony managed to hide a grin only through long weeks of practice.

Sif stood from her spot where she had lounged on the floor beside the couch and removed the smaller warrior easily, redirecting him towards the vast amounts of ice cream and other goodies. "Stand down, young Prince," she told him. "Now is not the time to waste energy fighting allies; now is the time to celebrate your victories with those who helped you achieve them."

Thor muttered something that sounded like a sulkish version of his full Asgardian title, but crowded in where the others had been cycling through and began to devour his fair share of the prizes, even bringing enough to share so that no one had to immediately get up to get more. They had been taking turns so far, which worked out great as far as Tony was concerned as he meant he got a break from at least one of them at any given time. He would have liked to share the love a little more than that, but Coulson was still down at HQ sorting through the crumpled masses of metal with a swarm of his own larger and possibly more annoying minions.

Sif clinked mugs with her knowing brothers-in-arms and requested, "Speak of this breakthrough so that our friends and comrades may be returned to us to fight at our sides the way they once did."

Fandral went on to explain something about energy signatures and chemical make up and the two combining in such a way as to alter something he called "the force of life" or some such thing and Tony highly doubted he actually knew anything of what he was talking about as he faltered at certain words and phrases and couldn't answer a single damn question that wasn't pre-rehearsed but it was more than he had before, so there was that. "Could maybe one of those scholars you spoke of come on down and talk with some of our scholars and maybe sort this out?" he tried with a wince when there was a break in the recitation. The tech stuff he understood, the energy stuff he could make sense of, the biological aspects is why he kept adult Bruce around - as a resource if not a springboard to better understanding.

"They claim their work is not yet finished," Fandral said in an almost apologetic tone. "They believe they have discovered a possible cure for Thor, but are uncertain of its effects on Midgardians, especially those enhanced as the majority of your brothers and fair sister are."

"And so, what, you came down here to sightsee?" Clint griped, obviously less than impressed. Then again, he could have just been cranky because he was forced to wear his cast again, which made eating ice cream, smacking an ice pack against Tony, and cuddling a neon pig more than slightly difficult.

"We came to succeed in battle!" Volstagg boasted cheerfully.

"And to bring you a sample of their findings thus far," Fandral amended diplomatically. He reached into some hidden fold in the tunic he wore and produced something Tony totally hoped was compatible with Stark-tech. If not, he was going to have a busy night ahead of him making it so. It seemed similar to something Thor had used before though, so hopefully it would be less work and more resolution in the long run.

Despite the sugar, the excitement of the day made the kids pass out sooner rather than later, except of course for Natasha who was totally faking but got to be carried off to her room by a dashing alien warrior, so Tony counted his blessings that she had not ended up a few years older, all seductive hormones in tact. That was a nightmare he doubted even Coulson could handle.

Speaking of nightmares, Tony felt the need to warn Hogun when he hefted a drowsy Bruce into his arms. "Careful with that one, he's not quite what he seems."

Hogun looked to him questioningly, but it was Sif who explained, "He is a changeling with the potential strength to rival the children of the Aesir. The stress upon him is great and should be avoided if possible."

The large man nodded and continued to gently cradle the child as he followed Alvarez's directions to the appointed room. When he did not immediately return, Sif explained, "He will likely watch over him for the night to ensure his rest after today's battle."

Tony briefly wondered how a frightened Hulk-able child would take a massive stranger just sitting and watching him sleep, but then thought of how Bruce had barely stirred at his current self-appointed guardian's touch and seemed to immediately trust the three Asgardians simply because his current mentors did. He made a mental note to ask JARVIS to keep a closer eye on the room than usual, and then sighed in relief as Volstagg lifted Steve up and away and he began to feel his hip again.

The ice had long since lost its coolness, and so Tony clambered to his feet to either switch the packs out or simply toss them to the side for someone else to deal with. He reached for the device Fandral had offered, but found it was no longer in place on the table. He patted himself down, but it wasn't tucked away in any pocket, or even left on the couch behind him and, yeah, he had a flash of worry that he had lost the potential cure for the rest of his team.

Sif stood before him though, arms crossed and knowing look upon her face. "Tonight you rest and heal; in the morning, when your mind has regained its focus, you find the cure for our allies."

He grumbled and griped and debated whether it was worth it to call his suit to him to try to best her and then realized that was just ridiculous and stupid and so he settled for a frown instead. "Really, mother?" he scoffed.

She simply beamed. "I would that any child I bear have your intellect and prowess in battle," she admitted. Then, with a sly grin, added, "Though I pray they avoid your stubborn foolishness."

It was a compliment and insult in one, and a fair one at that. "Eh, package deal," he shrugged. Pain raced up his arm at the movement, and he was already subtly leaning against the couch to keep standing. He doubted he fooled her for a moment, but he also doubted he was going to get a better offer than just one night of sleep. SHIELD would have kept him in medical overnight in the least and likely for a couple of days or more for observation had they suspected the full extent of his injuries. Nothing broken save for skin, but definitely bruised deep and wide. 

He bowed as dramatically as he could manage in concession to her less than optional offer, and limped back towards his rooms. He lay against his pillows and replayed the attack both mentally and via surveillance footage more than once, not liking a damn thing about it except the survival factor. Something still twigged about the setup of it all though, and he put it into the corner of his mind to analyze while he slept, drifting off to the hope of an actual cure and the wonderment of how low his stores of ale were about to become.

* * *

He entered the kitchen the next morning far more rested than he had any right to be. He had snuck a handful of painkillers back in his room, enough to keep the worse of the lingering uncomfortable aches at bay and not enough to make him loopy, but he doubted any possible hallucinatory effects could compete with the vision before him.

Coulson stood in the center of the room, eyes glued to the tablet he held in one hand while the other hand was busy lifting a box of Lucky Charms up and out of the reach of a giggling and jumping Bruce. "Eggs and bacon are ready on the stove," Phil said mildly without even bothering to look up from his reading. 

Clint had forgone the jumping and attempted to bodily climb his former and possibly current handler, but Fandral pulled him off and returned him to an empty chair at the table. Natasha had forgone both methods of ground attack and had climbed atop the counter to launch herself at the box, only to be stopped mid-air by Volstagg, who sat her down beside her cohorts before gathering Bruce to do the same. Steve and Thor sat opposite of each other at the table, shoveling food into their mouths in what he really hoped was not an eating contest, discarded bottles of salsa and what looked to be syrup sat off to the side, and he once again had a passing thought of food costs before realizing it really didn't matter as there was plenty more where that came from.

He also had a passing thought of how many dozens of eggs were sacrificed for the morning meal to feed the current posse as he gathered what he knew to be only the scraps for himself. He pushed that to the side as well and sat in a relatively clean spot to both dig in and ask, "So I went to bed like a good boy last night - didn't even get up and sneak to the lab or anything - does that mean I get my prize this morning?"

"It does indeed, Anthony," Sif replied, and set the small gift before him. He pocketed it before it could be either stolen back or covered in something undoubtedly sticky.

"Awesome," he said by way of thanks and was rewarded with a smile. He waited until Phil hid the cereal somewhere that would at least take a few minutes to find before he asked, "Hey, Agent, did you get the specs on the things that attacked us yesterday?"

"I'm reviewing them now," Coulson confirmed. He set a giant mug of coffee in front of him with the tablet and then stepped back to grab a second mug of the same size for himself, somehow managing to avoid getting even a single crumb on his standard immaculate suit. "Can I assume that you have an idea?"

Tony nodded and shoved a piece of bacon in his mouth before Clint's wandering hands could steal it from his plate. He let Natasha take the toast with jam though, figuring she could use the extra fuel with as active and tiny as she was. "I had been working on the assumption that whoever sent the robots was different from whoever sent the boxes of dire and doom," he began after chewing and swallowing and washing the lot down with a good swig of coffee.

"Fair considering the make up and applications," Coulson agreed. "Can I assume you now feel your original assumption was incorrect?"

Tony stabbed a greasy finger at the tablet, ignoring the way the other man flinched at the print left behind. He waited the split second for the projection system to kick in and then started tossing bits of data left and right, letting it hover in the air around him until he found what he was looking for. "There!" he exclaimed, pointing at the alignment of a handful of molecules, overlapping them both to show they were actually one in the same.

Phil leaned in and frowned. His head cocked slightly to the side and Tony opened his mouth to explain how both samples of the extremely unusual alloy came from different sources. Instead, Phil simply mused, "Now there is a rare coincidence."

"Yeah, not willing to put money on chance on this one," Tony shook his head. "A very specific alloy containing a very specific rare earth metal in a very specific combination? From two supposedly vastly different sources? If the builders aren't one in the same, they are at least in cahoots with each other."

"Did you just say 'cahoots'?" Coulson asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I did," Tony confirmed proudly. He spun the molecule mainly because he could more than to show any actual intel, and then pulled up the diagrams for both the destroyed robots and the original delivery boxes. "They are even using the same circuit pattern. Different designs by far, varying other parts likely to throw us off, massive red herrings with the overall casing on both but, when it comes down to it, to the very science of it, there is an underlying signature that can't be denied."

"And they couldn't both be supplied by a third party or have two parties happen across this combination on their own?" Phil verified. His hand was already on his phone though, as telling as outright stating he believed him.

"Science doesn't lie," Tony replied. He paused and amended, "Well, not unless you really want it to and even then, there is an underlying truth to it all. In this instance, it's the designer alloy, custom made at a great cost. My guess is that whoever is behind this came up with the design and trusts nothing but his own work, even if he's trying to distract us from that work. Trace back the design, trace back the components of the design, and we might find our guy."

"And a cure?" Sif asked, leaning in close.

Tony frowned and admitted, "Not necessarily. Though you could always try to beat it out of him." 

She and her fellow warriors smiled broadly in response as though that were an acceptable option and, yeah, Tony was glad they were on his side.

"Is JARVIS able to narrow down potential sources for the rare earth component, or do I need to get my guys on it?" Coulson asked, phone already to ear.

Tony didn't bother responding that JARVIS would utilize the pre-existing hack into SHIELD's databases in his review, but that was mainly because the AI himself replied, "That will be unnecessary, Agent Coulson. Analyzing potential sources now, cross-referencing with locations capable of processing the remaining materials."

Coulson nodded and, if he suspected the means of that analysis, he didn't say a word about it. The agent relayed the current findings to whoever was on the other end of the line, likely Fury or Hill if Tony was to hazard a guess, and then promised to keep said person updated if or when they were able to narrow down the source. He hung up, and Tony was tempted to tell him the action was premature, but he also offered refills on the coffee if not the bacon so Tony decided discretion was the better part of valor or some such thing and simply inhaled the gift.

Sure enough, less than ten minutes later, and JARVIS had a preliminary map of potential locations. It wasn't complete as these were simply known sources, registered and regulated, but a continued scan in the background consisting of satellite readings narrowed to specific magnetic and heat signatures would help with the details. Tony allotted another seven hours to the analysis, figuring JARVIS would either show him up or max out his limitations by then.

That gave them time to both review whatever the Asgardians had brought and use the mighty Warriors Three to wear out the kids enough to get them approaching docile, a rarity on a good day and a near impossibility following a day with as much excitement as they had the day before. Fandral and Volstagg had the team running a slightly controlled version of rampant while Sif and Hogun looked on, right until Hogun apparently tired of how long the repair crews were taking with the training range and decided to take matters into his own hands and finish the job himself. When asked, he simply said, "It needed to be done," and returned to his review of the children's activities. Tony chalked that up to the Alien ADD that seemed prevalent in every single extraterrestrial he had met thus far, thanked him for the help, and offered him both ale and a sixth serving of hotdogs in return. He noticed Clint's pout at not being able to look out at the tiny specks of people below anymore, and had to wonder if that had played a role with the other man's lack of patience.

Coulson reported on this and other things while Tony tried to sort out just what had been given to him. There were chemical formulae and biological readings and the language thankfully seemed to either be a mechanical version of AllSpeak or simply formatted for his version of English as it actually seemed like words, even if he didn't understand it all. He was damn close to admitting as much and requesting SHIELD assistance as the Asgardians that were present admitted it was beyond their ken when JARVIS got a hit.

"Pull it up, J," he ordered, and the room filled with images of a nondescript factory, the outlying terrain, and an exact location on a map. 

"That's halfway across the globe," Roberts commented.

He earned a less than impressed look from the newly present Hogun, but a considering, "True, yet we showed no trace of the robots before they appeared," from Coulson.

"It is possible the machines were built separately from the processing of the ore," Sif reasoned.

It was logical and sensible and yet still screamed as wrong in his mind, so Tony examined the data and sorted and resorted through it and tried to find what he knew had to be there. "Live feed?" he verified. "Reposition satellites for full energy readings."

The images of the factory were now overlaid with a timestamp that clicked merrily away in the corner, and a second set of near identical images were displayed, highlighted in bright fluorescent colors to represent the various energy and radiation readings.

"I've seen that before!" Bruce exclaimed excitedly. Tony turned to find the little rugrat had managed to worm his way through and around the various guards, official and not, to lurk behind one of the counters, tucked neatly up in himself on the cold stone floor.

"Come here, big guy," he called, and was rewarded with a lap full of brown curls and velour turtle. Bruce freed one hand from the poor toy's neck and tried to poke at one of the displays, and JARVIS lowered it to his level to allow him free reign of the process.

Tony didn't try to stop him, not a kid that may or may not have a genius level intellect and may or may not have spotted something they hadn't yet, but he did ask, "What'd you find?"

Bruce poked at the purple and managed to call up readings that probably meant nothing to him, but cheerfully explained, "That one! It's the same color as from the guy with the paws."

Tony took a moment to decipher that one, shook his head, and looked to the others for assistance. "Wolverine? At the station?" Coulson guessed. Paws versus claws, a quick glimpse gifted with a child's reasoning, and it made a sort of sense. Plus it was something he could use against Logan later.

A nod, completely unrepentant that he wasn't supposed to see that either, confirmed the analysis. "I like purple," the kid admitted like it was some huge secret not yet revealed by the line of footwear behind them.

"You sure do," Tony mumbled absently in agreement, trying to see the connection. When he found it, he would have smacked himself if he wouldn't risk his current seatmate. Instead, he snapped his fingers and looked up to find Coulson with raised eyebrows, probably about the reach the same conclusion. In unison, they both declared, "Portals!"

"It would explain the ease of transport," Sif agreed. She manipulated the images as if she had been doing so her whole life. Considering she was actually from an advanced race of aliens with tech beyond his wet dreams, Tony wasn't exactly surprised. Data scrolled by at an impressive speed, configurations changed and manipulated and realigned until she let out a satisfied huff and declared, "I believe we should be able to repurpose the signal to our needs."

"And those needs are...?" Coulson prompted.

She looked at him as though the answer were obvious and, when she actually voiced it, Tony realized it kinda really was. "To travel to this place without aid of the Bifrost, obtain the data we require, and destroy the passageway in our wake."

"So, nuking it from orbit is out?" Roberts guessed. Tony, at least, appreciated his humor. The poor guy had held up well so far, better than someone tossed into this insanity had any right to. A little snark and sarcasm bleeding through after everything else? It showed he was human and not some random construct SHIELD had created.

Sif looked perplexed by the idea though. "The portals appear stationary in nature, with a set beginning and endpoint. A nuclear device as primitive as Midgardian standard may well activate the portals and carry the energy of the destruction to the preprogrammed exits."

Tony had a quick glance at her screens and concurred with her findings. Roberts was opening his mouth again, possibly to say he had been joking and possibly to ask for more intel, but he cut him off with, "Considering those endpoints are so far known to include a populated subway and a place close enough to here to have to be pretty much downtown, that's a no." He drummed his fingers across the table, dodging the apparently carnivorous turtle in the process and considered the problem. "Give me a day? Maybe two? I should be able to come up with something to avoid destroying the city again."

"Could we not simply traverse to the source of the portal, obtain the information desired, and return after initiating a sequence for closure?" Hogun asked. It was the direct, practical choice that would involve the least amount of resources with, hopefully, the maximum output. Tony was kinda sorry he hadn't thought of it himself. Kinda. It wouldn't be as big and flashy but, really, he did have to admit he'd had enough excitement recently to earn a break from it all.

Coulson called up Fury to make certain they had the backup teams in place, both around the city and around the target. Anything involving portals was bound to go horribly wrong, or at least had the potential to, so he requested surveillance and assault teams on standby of any known location where an attack had occurred thus far, as well as where JARVIS was currently calculating the robots to have appeared from.

Tony busied himself with looking at the rest of the data the Asgardians had provided while Coulson did his thing. Biological sciences were so not his forte, and he had a feeling this was above and beyond what even the top echelons of SHIELD's science division could comprehend, but he did his best to make heads and tails of it anyway.

He looked up from the data at a patiently waiting Sif and asked, "So you're saying they're whole, just not really?" He scrubbed a hand through his hair and wondered if the stickiness he found was from himself or from the kid that was beginning to nod off atop the pins and needles he called a lap.

"The bond between their true selves and who they once were has been damaged, but not beyond repair," she agreed. "That which changed them, the chemical and biological compounds as you call them, can be altered to repair what was done. The challenge will be in making certain what our scientists believe to be safe for one of our kind will also be deemed safe for one of yours." She paused and looked troubled, a warning sign if there ever was one. "Regardless of who the cure is given to, I fear the process will be just as intense as the original, if not more so." 

"Awesome," he muttered. His teammates had been in outright agony then; the thought of willingly putting children through that was not something he wanted to contemplate right about now. Or ever. Never would be too soon, really. She shrugged as though that were the long and short of it, and he couldn't argue with that.


	8. Hit the Ground Running

Coulson finished sorting out the logistics of the immediate issue at least, if nothing more. A team would be sent to the factory to gather any and all information and to try to shut down the processes from there - if they even resided there in the first place. Tony and Coulson would go with, as would Fandral and a fair deal of SHIELD agents. Hogun and Volstagg wished to remain behind with Sif to protect the children and the city as a whole in their absence and he rather liked the idea of three out of this world warriors watching over the brood. JARVIS would, of course, keep him updated should anyone on the slightly asshole end of the spectrum try anything, and Pepper would unleash the entire unholy force of Stark Industries' lawyers at a moment's notice should those assholes be in the least bit pretending to be official.

Of course, that was just the plan. The reality of the situation was that all communication ceased the moment they got within a mile of the factory, either on purpose or due to the alloy processing having a previously unknown side effect. It did very little to calm his fears about anything happening back in New York, but it did strongly hint that they were in the right place, or at least in a place that could point them to the right one. Few abandoned factories in the middle of nowhere put out scrambling fields unless they weren't really that abandoned.

This one, as a surprise to no one, turned out to be really not that abandoned. Only a handful of life-signs, and by that he meant heat signatures and visual confirmation of such, but there was a fuck ton of the robots. This again led credence to them being on the right track.

He was almost disappointed in how anticlimactic the fight was, really. The factory was big, but the primary robots weren't exactly small, and so their lack of maneuverability worked against them. They had been manufactured in an open cavern of a room, and moved to a much smaller area for storage. Getting out of that area proved difficult for the robots and an awesome happenstance for the good guys . Fandral and he had a joyous old time smashing them to bits even though Coulson and his team had to deal with both the shrapnel and the smaller robots that wormed their way through while he and his new buddy dealt with the larger ones.

Not that it was an easy fight, per se. The robots were pretty damn persistent, and had possibly been upgraded since he last saw them if the new toys were anything to go by. Luckily, they saw the suit as far more of a threat than an Asgardian, which was just plain stupid on their part. Pretty Boy might not know a lot about science, but he knew warfare well enough, including how to look for chinks in his opponents armor. So, when Fandral shouted for him to aim for a specific joint as well as demonstrated that even his blade could penetrate it, Tony locked, loaded, and fired.

The resulting explosion was pretty, especially when it started a cascade reaction and did far more than just dismember the thing. With the suit's internal version of JARVIS at the helm, it was a quick enough matter to have him program a handful of missiles to take out the remainder of the large machines, leaving them solely with the smaller ones to contend with. Considering Baby Cap had taken one out with an art easel, he was fairly confident they could handle the problem.

Of course that's when Coulson's voice came across the line with orders of, "Leave them, my team will handle them. I need you and your Asgardian escort to see this."

And Tony was very tempted to make comments about Fandral and escorts, really he was, but the words died on the tip of his tongue when he saw just what Phil had found.

It wasn't the manufacturing hub as those machines were on the far end of the building, currently being decimated by Coulson's lackeys. No, this was the brain of the operation: computers and targeting systems and readouts and a machine that was currently dormant and he could only guess as to its purpose and none of the options were warm and fuzzy. In the center of it all, surrounded by minions mostly either dead or tranqed, was one Bartholomew Oliviet O'Malley.

"Barty? Really?" Tony asked. He wasn't sure if it was annoyance, exasperation, or disappointment, but he did make sure to raise his faceplate so that he man in question could see the expression he currently wore. "I'd say I thought better of you, but I really just try not to think about you at all."

"I take it you know this man?" Coulson guessed with the dryness of a desert.

"Barty O'Malley," Tony confirmed. He was certain Phil could have a full dossier of the man delivered at a moment's notice, but decided to save him the time. "Weapons manufacturer, which is kind of obvious, really. He's always liked a biological aspect that the bigwigs haven't what with those things usually getting out of control or into the wrong hands or mutating greatly, yadda." He paused and made a show of squinting at the balding, pale man that was currently glaring in his direction. "You haven't grown yourself a tail or anything yet, have you, Barty?"

"Bartholomew!" the weasel of a man snapped. He barely flinched at the way Coulson waved his gun to remind him of its presence but did use a far more calmer sneer to ask, "How are the children, Stark? Do they need potty training or day care yet?"

It was Fandral that answered, a frown upon his face, "They have not regressed to such a state. Perhaps your formula was as faulty as your mentality." Coulson sighed at the unintentional baiting, but Tony marked yet another big mental check in the column of reasons he liked the Asgardians and their lack of subtlety.

O'Malley did the thing that was a forced and very fake frown, pursed lips and all, and Tony prepared himself because no one did that unless they had one last card to play. On the one hand, it was Barty which meant that card might have no value. On the other, pretty much everything he had thrown out there had wreaked havoc so far, so it was probably not something to take lightly. Sure enough, he sighed in a truly over dramatic fashion and said, "Well then, perhaps this will fix that."

O'Malley slammed his hands down onto the console and earned what might have been a tranq and might have been something far more serious right to his throat for his troubles. It was too late though, and Tony didn't need his suit's enhanced sensors so see why. Consoles lit and alarms wailed and the seemingly innocuous machine was of course anything but and now had arcs of energy coursing around and through it.

"Aw, Barty, what did you do?" Tony whined, trying to take in everything at once to figure out just what the grand plan had been.

The few remaining minions chose the split second of hesitation caused by the newfound chaos to attack. He trusted Fandral and Coulson to handle those though, and simply pushed a random idiot with high aspirations to the side while he approached what was apparently a central control board to figure out both what it did and how to shut it down.

He knocked O'Malley's unconscious form out of the way a little less than gently and took a closer look at what appeared to be the primary screen. He assumed the big red circles were a targeting system of sorts and the grid they overlaid was a map. Said grid looked suspiciously like the real estate currently occupied and/or surrounding the Tower. Three circles stopped their random dancing and stacked atop one another to form a single, brighter, target.

Inside the shields.

"He's after the kids!" Tony exclaimed. He started typing frantically, trying to stop whatever the hell it was that Barty started, but he didn't have the data, he didn't have the intel, he didn't have a fucking clue as to what chain reaction had been keyed.

"Stark!" Coulson shouted, catching his attention. He turned his head but didn't need to ask what was so important. The machine now held a spiral of energy, a whirlpool about to become a wormhole, and he was fairly certain as to just where the endpoint would be.

Of course there was more than that because, really, there had to be. You don't just open a portal to your self-declared enemies without having something damaging to send through as a gift. The pile of seamless metal boxes that had been stacked up against the wall began to unfold, smaller and more compact versions of the robots emerging from at least half of them. It made sense: if the destination couldn't house the big guys, you had to send smaller. A lot of very determined smallers.

The robots themselves were clearly made of the same material as the first, but their size made them a tiny bit easier to cope with. But only a tiny. They still had all the bells and whistles and weapons and were quite content using them all. That was all well and good, even though fighting both them and the remaining minions could be generously described as a little bit harried, but there were several that refused to engage in the fight at all.

Three made their way to the primary entrance where SHIELD agents were incoming. Two made it their goal to protect the machine generating the portal. Another two hovered by the far wall that hummed and likely housed the energy source powering the damn thing if the readings were to be believed. But one final robot moved slower, almost with a sense of stealth, weaving in and out of the battle with nary a scratch on itself. Or on the box it carried.

Tony fired at it, locked and loaded and sorely disappointed when a different robot sacrificed itself to make certain the other one survived. It was nearly at the portal now, and any doubt of its destination was right out the window when the swirl began to coalesce into a blurry image of five surprised children and three pissed off warriors.

A shot from a well-meaning agent actually pushed the thing closer versus disabling it, and Tony watched in horror as gleaming metal began to dissolve at one end only to reappear after a buffer of mere inches on the other side. It took seconds, heartbeats really, for the robot to fully emerge and the swarm of remaining annoyances to find a new purpose in trying to get as many of themselves as possible through the portal.

It also took about that long for him to come up with an idea. It was probably a bad one, but it was the only one he had at the moment so he decided to run with it. Or fly with it as the case may be. 

"Coulson, take out the power supply, I'm going through to help the kids!" he ordered. 

It was rash and stupid and would likely end badly and he knew this all. He knew his teammates had at least slivers of themselves within them and could probably defend themselves against a single robot given they had done so in the past without the additional support of three Asgardian warriors to back them up. He also knew his team, those cognitively able to make such decisions and access such knowledge right now, were not exactly strong on the science side of things. Mix that with Asgardian bodyguards, whose first instinct was to smash and annihilate threats, and it was a potential recipe for disaster. 

It was a mechanical threat, a threat based off of Midgardian tech that may be less advanced than Asgardian standard but was that much more dangerous for being part of the unknown. He needed to be there. He needed to be with them. He needed to know they were safe and if he happened to play a role in keeping them that way, all the better.

He barely had the wherewithal to lower his mask in case the thing didn't take kindly to unprotected biological entities before he fired his repulsors and let the abyss swallow him whole.

The full Tower-based version of JARVIS came online almost immediately, updating him with everything that had happened at home so far. Aside from the smaller guy that had gotten through with the box, one of the larger originals was pecking away at the shields, either a distraction or a backup plan, and several others were dodging Xavier's group along the border. The Warriors Two plus Sif made short work of the little guy and Volstagg stationed himself right at the opening of the portal to try to take out any newcomers, possibly before they even fully materialized.

"Take care that you do not destroy Fandral nor Son of Coul should they need the transport," Sif warned, which was a valid point. While the origination point provided a glimpse of what was on the other side, the destination showed only a smear of gray with a glint of brightness that may or may not have been more robots incoming.

A glance showed shields were holding at eighty-one percent, but the mass of metal was literally right across from the newly restored windows. "Did you need me to go out and take care of that thing?" Tony asked, or at least he meant to.

Anything he actually planned on enunciating was cut off by Sif's warning shout of, "Thor, no!"

It was then that precisely three things happened: He received a warning from Coulson relayed through various agents until they got a signal that there was a damn good chance everything was about to blow and debris may find its way through the portal. Thor ignored Sif's warning and his hammer was in an arc headed downward over a small metal box that was beginning to open right next to a smaller shinier box that looked Asgardian in origin. One final robot not only made its way through the portal, but past a Volstagg that was rightly distracted by both his liege and the remnants of another robot.

The recently emerged robot made a beeline for the suit and had apparently learned its weak spots as it attacked those with a singleminded purpose. Tony couldn't fire a missile inside - well, he could, but not without enough collateral damage that would likely include the kids - so he had to resort to other methods. Hogun moved to help, as did the miniaturized Cap and he was fairly certain the blur of black and red was Natasha. The arrow that bounced off the casing and the second one that lodged itself deep in a mass of circuitry was most definitely Clint. That left only Bruce who, of course, was turning a shade of Hulk while throwing off some poor schmuck of an agent and shouting, "I can help!"

As far as potential last sights went, it was impressive. Unfortunately, that was not his final vision. Instead, there was a burst of bright light that the suit tried to compensate for followed by a brain-rattling thud when he hit the ground, heap of metal still on top of him. Right before unconsciousness swallowed him whole he saw one final sight, something that made him try to fight against the wave of nausea even if that attempt was so clearly in vain: his HUD filled with the neatly color-coded alerts of each and every one of the children's personal alarms.

* * *

The swim back to consciousness was both a painful and a surprising thing. As much as he appreciated the fact he was alive to do so, he was less than appreciative of the whole agony aspect of it all. One thing helped him get past that though, and it was the memory of the last few seconds before everything faded to black.

His eyes shot open and he tried to shoot upwards in bed, really he did, even if he only made it a few inches before the whole limitations of moving thing kicked in. There was a hand on his shoulder, gentle, light and most likely deadly as it belonged to a woman who could've squashed him like a bug even before he was in his current state.

"Easy," Sif bade. "Rest friend Stark."

"The kids! My team! The Tower, there was..." he tried. His throat was dry and his tongue felt like sandpaper and he was fairly certain nothing he said was remotely intelligible, but Sif just looked at him knowingly. Maybe Allspeak worked with incoherent randomness as well.

A push that was not quite a shove, and he was back against the pillows again. "Your team is well," she promised. "If you do not believe me, let them speak to you for themselves."

"Ha! We totally ranked higher than the Tower, he does love us!" a voice crowed from the side.

He knew that voice. He recognized that voice. It was a voice he had heard countless times, usually spewing snark if not profanity. 

It was also a voice he had not heard for weeks.

He turned his head slowly to the left. Nausea and dizziness rolled over him in waves and the light from the room seemed to strobe in and out, but he refused to close his eyes against it. He needed to see as well as hear. He needed to verify this was a truth and not some pharmaceutical-induced dream. Though why the hell he would fantasize about Barton when there were far more pleasing options was just damned strange.

But there he was, in the flesh. A lot more flesh than before. Enough flesh to make him whole-sized again. There was a scrape along his hairline and a bruise along his jawline and another one peeking out from under one of the short sleeves of his shirt but otherwise he seemed no worse for wear. Tony had to amend that slightly though, when the other man waved and he caught sight of the brace he still wore on his other arm. Apparently the mystical-magical whatever had managed to return them to size, but in whatever state they had been in at the time.

"The others?" he prompted because he honestly could not swear by just what state they had been in when he went down.

"All present and accounted for," another voice promised. 

This time he did force himself upright, at least a little, and accepted Sif's exasperated assistance in doing so. Across from him stood Steve, bedecked in his standard plaid with his sleeves rolled up his once again massive forearms. An exhausted and pensive looking Bruce stood to his side, glasses and curls askew in a away that told of his fidgeting the way he did when nervous or fighting being upset. Thor stood beside him, awesome as always, and Natasha stood on the other side of Steve closest to her usual partner in crime.

It was Natasha that offered a wave, the act of which made him notice something different than her standard accessories around her wrist: black and red and either resized to her normal form or purposely rebuilt and therefore purposefully worn. 

A glance showed blue and white around Steve's wrist, right above the brown leather band of his watch. Bruce's sleeves were down, but he thought he caught a glimpse of purple and green poking through. Thor's red, black, and gold seemed to be worn with pride, and Clint made a show of pulling at the purple polymer around his good wrist while he pointed out, "They're like friendship bracelets for superheroes. And before you make any jokes about tagging and bagging us, realize you've been asleep for like three days."

Tony translated the Clint-speak into something more coherent and looked down to find what he had thought was just a hospital ID bracelet was actually a red and gold version of their newfound cult wear. He was tempted to yank on it, mainly to make light of the situation and hide the fact some less-than-small part of him was actually touched by the act, but found a hand stopping his own. He followed the hand to a wrist with a slightly smaller version of Thor's colors, and then upwards to a smirking Sif. 

"I have been advised this is a sign of family and will proudly wear it as such," she declared, and he caught the less than subtle undertones that she strongly suggested he do the same. "Even your Son of Coul wears his, surely you would not undermine this bonding activity by lessening the act?"

And, yeah, she was too damn smart for her own good. Of course, now he was thinking of how, sooner or later, some baddie would notice the things and find a way to track them and how he could prevent that and... "The Asgardians added their own special touches, I think we're safe," Bruce said knowingly.

"Fury had his people run every test they could think of and they never got a hit," Natasha confirmed.

"JARVIS himself tried, and could only get a signal when we activated them," Bruce promised.

"They're also hella difficult to remove, which is a nice codependent insurance policy," Barton chimed in.

Tony pulled at his own, felt the material bend and shift with the flex of his muscle, but in no way loosen or tear. He'd run some more tests because he was that kind of guy, but he'd also wear it with maybe a tiny bit of pride because he was also totally that kind of guy. Or at least he was now after everything that had happened if he wasn't before.

He leaned back against the too flat and scratchy pillows and took in the sight of his team, healthier and haler than he could have hoped for all those long weeks before. He let their voices wash over him as they updated him on the destruction of the facility and just what was to happen to good ol' Barty and the remnants of his company. There were jokes about marshmallows and fairy wings and self defense via art supplies but he knew, once he escaped and made his way home again, that he'd find the hallway next to the elevator lined with pretty purple canvas shoes. 

They'd just be a little bit bigger this time.

 

End.


End file.
